Retrovirus-mediated gene transfer to purified hemopoietic stem cells with long-term lympho-myelopoietic repopulating ability.

Despite recent advances in marrow stem cell purification, controversy about the nature and heterogeneity of cells with the potential for long-term repopulation of lymphoid and myeloid tissues remains. Essential to the resolution of these questions is the use of strategies to track the progeny produced in vivo from individual hemopoietic stem cells in purified populations. We have used a procedure for obtaining highly enriched populations of stem cells with competitive repopulating ability from male mice (pretreated with 5-fluorouracil), and in this paper we present the results of studies in which small numbers (150-2000) of these cells were exposed to supernatant containing a helper-free recombinant retrovirus carrying the neomycin-resistance gene and then were transplanted together with 2 x 10(5) "compromised" female marrow cells into irradiated female recipients. Male cells--i.e., progeny of purified stem cells--were found in one or more of the tissues examined (peripheral blood, marrow, spleen, and thymus) in 28 of 28 mice evaluated at various times between 35 and 196 days after transplantation. In 20 of these mice (71%), the neomycin-resistance gene was also detected, although not always at a level that correlated with the proportion of male cells. Analysis of spleen colonies (day 12) generated in secondary recipients confirmed that viral integration was confined to male repopulating cells. In three mice direct evidence of a common clone in both lymphoid and myeloid tissues was also obtained. These results show the feasibility of retrovirus-mediated gene transfer to highly purified populations of lympho-myelopoietic stem cells with long-term (6 months) repopulating potential by using a supernatant infection protocol. This approach should facilitate further analysis of hemopoietic stem cell control in vivo and find future applications in the evolving use of bone marrow transplantation for hemopoietic rescue and gene therapy.