TGF-beta 3 protects normal human hematopoietic progenitor cells treated with 4-hydroperoxycyclophosphamide in vitro.

In this study we have investigated the ability of transforming growth factor-beta 3 (TGF-beta 3, 1000 pM) to protect hematopoietic bone marrow (BM) progenitor cells from the cytotoxic activity of 4-hydroperoxycyclophosphamide (4-HC, 100 microM) in vitro. Hematopoietic progenitors were purified by negative depletion of accessory and maturing cells or enriched by positive (CD 34+ cells) selection. For comparison the same treatment was tested on three different lymphoid cell lines CEM, SK-DHL-2, and LY-16. The experimental protocol was designed to mimic ex vivo purging conditions. Therefore, tumor cells and enriched hematopoietic precursors were mixed with irradiated BM cells. Our results demonstrated that preincubation of enriched progenitor cells with TGF-beta 3 for up to 72 h followed by 4-HC treatment resulted in an increased survival of colonies derived from granulocyte-macrophage (CFU-GM) and erythroid (BFU-E) colony-forming cells, whereas a substantially lower number of colonies was observed in the control group. Similar results were observed when BM cells were first treated with 4-HC followed by TGF-beta 3 incubation for 24 or 48 h. In contrast, TGF-beta 3 provided no protection to the 4-HC cytotoxicity toward the lymphoma and leukemia cell lines. Three to four log of tumor cell killing was induced by 4-HC in the presence or absence of preincubation with TGF-beta 3. These data suggest that TGF-beta 3 is able to protect normal BM progenitors from the cytotoxic activity of an alkylating agent (4-HC) in vitro, whereas it does not offer any protection to lymphoma cell lines. These findings will have important implications for developing better purging conditions for autologous GM transplantation.