Project description:Hematopoiesis in adult mammals involves cognate interactions between developing hematopoietic cells and bone marrow stromal cell niches. SCF and CXCL12 play key roles in the maintenance of HSC, while early B cell differentiation requires CXCL12 and IL7. In this study, we characterized mouse BM stromal cells expressing IL7 by performing a transcriptomic analysis. We found that SCF, CXCL12 and IL7 were co-expressed by a unique peri-sinusoidal stromal cell subset.
Project description:Hematopoiesis in adult mammals involves cognate interactions between developing hematopoietic cells and bone marrow stromal cell niches. SCF and CXCL12 play key roles in the maintenance of HSC, while early B cell differentiation requires CXCL12 and IL7. In this study, we characterized mouse BM stromal cells expressing IL7 by performing a transcriptomic analysis. We found that SCF, CXCL12 and IL7 were co-expressed by a unique peri-sinusoidal stromal cell subset.
Project description:Bone marrow (BM) stromal cells are important in the development and maintenance of cells of the immune system. Using single cell RNA sequencing, we here explore the functional and phenotypic heterogeneity of individual transcriptomes of 1,167 murine BM mesenchymal stromal cells. These cells exhibit a tremendous heterogeneity of gene expression, which precludes the identification of defined subpopulations. However, according to the expression of 108 genes involved in the communication of stromal cells with hematopoietic cells, we have identified 14 non-overlapping subpopulations, with distinct cytokine or chemokine gene expression signatures. With respect to the maintenance of subsets of immune memory cells by stromal cells, we identify distinct subpopulations expressing IL7, IL15 and Tnfsf13b. Together, this study provides a comprehensive dissection of the BM stromal heterogeneity at the single cell transcriptome level and provides a basis to understand their lifestyle and their role as organizers of niches for the long-term maintenance of immune cells.
Project description:Maturation of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC) in bone marrow (BM) and of T-lymphocytes in thymus occurs within stromal areas innervated by adrenergic fibers of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). Here we have discovered that in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), a mouse model of multiple sclerosis (MS), SNS signaling to specific stromal cells expressing beta 3 adrenergic receptors (B3AR) promote differentiation and mobilization of hematopoietic precursors in BM and generation of regulatory T-lymphocytes (Treg) in the thymus. We demonstrate that the functionality of B3AR on BM and thymic stromal cells is under control of hypothalamic neurons expressing Agouti-Related Protein (AgRP), which are activated in EAE. The finding that AgRP neuropeptide is increased in the serum of people with MS, supports that AgRP neurons might be activated also in MS.
Project description:In the bone marrow, CXCL12 and IL7 are essential for B cell differentiation whereas hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) maintenance requires SCF and CXCL12. Previous studies, including ours, indicate that peri-sinusoidal stromal (PSS) cells are heterogeneous and that part of them express and are the main source of IL7. Our single cell qPCR and transcriptomic analysis demonstrate that SCF, CXCL12 and IL7 are co-expressed by a unique peri-sinusoidal stromal cell subset.
Project description:Circulating osteoprogenitor (COP) are a population of cell in the peripheral circulation that possess functional and phenotypical characteristics of multipotent stromal cells (MSCs). While there is functional overlap, it is not known how COP cells are related to bone marrow (BM)-derived MSCs (BM-MSCs) and other better characterized stromal progenitor populations such as adipose-derived stromal cells (ASCs). This study compares COP cells to BM-MSCs and ASCs through detailed transcriptomic and proteomic analyses. COP cells have a distinct gene and protein expression pattern to BM-MSCs and ASCs, with a significantly stronger immune footprint, likely owing to their hematopoietic lineage. However, they also have a similar pattern of expression BM-MSCs and ASCs, in genes and proteins in progenitor cell differentiation and proliferation pathways. This study shows COP cells to be a unique but functionally similar population to BM-MSCs and ASCs, sharing their proliferation and differentiation capacity, but with a strong immune phenotype, with potential for translational regenerative medicine strategies.
Project description:Head Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma (HNSCC)- or Bone Marrow (BM)- derived mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) were analyzed either resting or following stimulation with IFN-g and TNF-a cytokines.
Project description:Glioblastoma is the most common and most devastating adult primary brain tumor. Despite aggressive multimodal therapy, the median survival is approximately one year after diagnosis. In recent years bone marrow-derived human mesenchymal stem cells (BM-hMSCs) have shown promise as cell-based delivery vehicles for anti-glioma therapeutics. This is largely due to their innate ability to migrate towards gliomas. Several studies have successfully demonstrated their use as delivery vehicles for anti-glioma agents. However, it is now evident that BM-hMSCs demonstrate variable tropism towards gliomas based on a clinically relevant glioma stem cell (GSC) model of GBM. In this study, we compared the proteomic profile of cancer and stromal cell populations in GSC xenografts that attract BM-hMSCs (‘attractors’) with those to do not (‘non-attractors’) in order to identify cell-signaling pathways that may modulate BM-hMSCs homing followed by targeted transcriptomic analysis of human gene sets related to glioma biology. We identified lower protein expression of fatty acid metabolism and glucose-dependent metabolic pathways in attractors. While transcriptomic analysis suggested that N-linked glycosylation was increased. Conversely, glucose metabolic pathways, including oxidative phosphorylation, were increased in the stromal cells present in attractors. The results presented here provide the first evidence for glucose metabolism, reactive oxidative species and lipid-mediated tumor inflammatory response, and N-linked glycosylation in the homing of BM-hMSC to GSC xenografts. Reciprocal expression of these pathways in the stromal cell population may suggest microenvironment cross-talk. Our studies provide new insights on the signaling correlates underlying the differential homing capacity of BM-hMSCs to GSC xenografts.
Project description:The use of lipid nanoparticles (LNP) to encapsulate and deliver mRNA has become an important therapeutic advance. In addition to vaccines, LNP-mRNA can be used in many other applications. For example, targeting the LNP with anti-CD5 antibodies (CD5/tLNP) can allow for efficient delivery of mRNA payloads to T cells to express protein. As the percentage of protein expressing T cells induced by an intravenous injection of CD5/tLNP is relatively low (4-20%), our goal was to find ways to increase mRNA-induced translation efficiency. We showed that T cell activation using an anti-CD3 antibody improved protein expression after CD5/tLNP transfection in vitro but not in vivo. T cell health and activation can be increased with cytokines, therefore, using mCherry mRNA as a reporter, we found that culturing either mouse or human T cells with the cytokine IL7 significantly improved protein expression of delivered mRNA in both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in vitro. By pre- treating mice with systemic IL7 followed by tLNP administration, we observed significantly increased mCherry protein expression by T cells in vivo. Transcriptomic analysis of mouse T cells treated with IL7 in vitro revealed enhanced genomic pathways associated with protein translation. Improved translational ability was demonstrated by showing increased levels of protein expression after electroporation with mCherry mRNA in T cells cultured in the presence of IL7, but not with IL2 or IL15. These data show that IL7 selectively increases protein translation in T cells, and this property can be used to improve expression of tLNP-delivered mRNA in vivo.