Differentiation Potency of Bone Marrow C-Kit+ He-matopoietic Progenitor Cells towards Natural Killer Cell Line

Background: As previously indicated, natural killer (NK) cells play a key role in the elimination of compromised host cells, such as tumor or virus-infected cells. The ability of NK cells to kill without prior sensitization has made them attractive for cell therapy. Notably, the use of NK cells for cell therapy re-lies on the availability of a great number of NK cells with op-timal cytotoxic activity. Obtaining a large number of NK cells is an important, although difficult task that underlies the most significant challenge to the development of successful NK cell adoptive transfer protocols. NK cells can be differentiated from stem cells and can be used directly for immunotherapy or after a short- or long-term expansion in vitro with interleukins such as IL-2, IL-7 and IL-15. Since access to cord blood cells is less feasible, another approach is the generation of NK cells from stem cells especially hematopoietic stem cells. Previous in vitro studies have shown that using specific fundamental factors, bone marrow lineage hematopoietic stem cells can differentiate into the NK cells.Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, mononu-clear cells (MNCs) were collected by Ficoll-Hypaque gradient centrifugation and c-kit+ cells were enriched by MACS meth-od. In the following, c-kit+ cells were treated in the presence of NK differential factors such as SCF (kit ligand), FLT3 and IL-15 for 21 days. At the end of treatment period, differentiated cells were collected and subjected to flow cytometry for detect-ing the NK cell markers.Results: The results of this study showed that the c-kit+ differ-entiated cells were positive for NK cells marker CD56 (70.5%). Conclusion: It was concluded that the c-kit+ cells as hemat-opoietic progenitor cells could differentiate to NK cells. In the following of obtaining satisfactory results from this project, it is recommended to apply these results to the animal model and eventually conduct large scale clinical trial in future to use these cells to large number of patients in terms to prove its efficacy more authentic way.

Keywords:

C-kit+ Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells , NK Cells , Differentiation Potency