The capacity of connective tissue stromas to sustain myelopoiesis depends both upon the growth factors and the local intercellular environment.

In adults, haemopoiesis is located in the bone marrow, where it is tightly regulated by cytokines and by a physical association of haemopoietic progenitors with the stroma. However, in pathological situations, haemopoiesis can be partly or fully dislodged to peripheral tissues. It is not clear which are the requirements for a given peripheral stroma to sustain haemopoiesis. Using the growth factor-dependent cell line FDC-P1, we have compared the myelopoietic capacities of a murine bone marrow-derived cell line S17, a liver inflammatory granuloma-derived stroma (GR) that sustains haemopoiesis, and normal skin fibroblasts (SF) that sustain neither survival nor proliferation of myeloid cells. All three stromas expressed mRNA for major haemopoietins with the exception of IL-3. Despite the incapacity of SF to sustain FDC-P1 cells, the biologically active GM-CSF could be recovered from all the studied stromas by treatment with high-salt buffers that release non-covalently bound molecules from stroma cells. Glycosaminoglycans purified from stromas had distinct effect on the GM-CSF-mediated proliferation of FDC-P1 cells: those purified from S17 and GR cells were stimulatory, whereas those obtained from SF cells were slightly stimulatory at low concentration, but inhibitory at the higher ones. We conclude that the quality of the stroma pericellular glycoconjugates is determinant for the ability of a given stroma to sustain myelopoiesis, even when biologically active haemopoietins are locally produced.