Thrombopoietin expands erythroid, granulocyte-macrophage, and megakaryocytic progenitor cells in normal and myelosuppressed mice.

Thrombopoietin (Tpo), the ligand for the proto-oncogene receptor c-Mpl, increases megakaryocyte size, ploidy, and surface expression of platelet-specific glycoproteins, is inversely related to platelet mass, and is a potent in vivo stimulus of platelet production. However, several features of c-mpl biology, and that of its viral counterpart v-mpl, suggest that the action of Tpo may not be strictly limited to megakaryocytopoiesis. To investigate the possibility that Tpo might affect a multitude of cell lineages, we studied the effects of in vivo administration of the hormone on multiple types of marrow and splenic clonogenic hematopoietic progenitors. We report that Tpo acts to expand BFU-E, CFU-GM, and CFU-Mk and redistribute CFU-E in normal mice and to hasten the recovery of all of these progenitor cell types in myelosuppressed animals. These findings argue that the hematopoietic progenitor cell compartment responds to Tpo as a whole and that the in vivo effects of Tpo administration may be more wide-ranging than previously anticipated.