CD34+ progenitor cell isolation from blood and marrow: a comparison of techniques for small-scale selection.

The isolation and characterization of primitive hematopoietic cells and their purification in sufficient numbers is important in clinical and research marrow transplantation settings. As systems for large-scale isolation and amplification of such cells are developed, they may assume importance in transplantation, treatment of marrow failure and for gene therapy applications. Such cells have been isolated by numerous techniques and in this work, small-scale isolation of CD34+ cells by two immunoadsorption purification methods is compared with isolation by flow cytometry. While the immunoadsorption techniques allow for the processing of large numbers of density gradient-separated or unseparated cells for progenitor isolation, such techniques do not achieve the purity afforded by fluorescence activated cell sorter separation.