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Hematopoietic potential of neural stem cells

Nature Medicine volume 8, pages 535–536 (2002)Cite this article

To the editor

As the frequency of NSCs in human brain tissues is about 0.5–1%, we estimate that the frequency for the totipotent neurohematopoietic stem-cell population in human brain tissues is about 1 in 1−2 × 104. Our data correlate well with the 1982 study of Bartlett et al.7 that showed neurohematopoietic stem-cell population in adult mouse brain at the same frequency. In a recent analysis of muscle differentiation potential of NSCs by Galli et al.9, all of the clones tested were myogenic and one of the clones, 2H1, was the same used earlier by Bjornson et al. in the hematopoietic study2, showing a multipotential for neural, hematopoietic and myogenic potentials. Analyzing blastocyst chimeras in chick and mouse embryos generated using cultured neurospheres, Clarke et al.13 have reported that NSC-derived cells were reproducibly found in various organs of the embryo derived from all three germ layers, with the exception of the hematopoietic system. Taken all together, these results suggest that cultured NSCs are heterogenous and there are multiple varieties of multipotent NSCs not only for neural cells but also for muscle, hematopoietic lineages, and cells in other tissues. It is distinctly possible that various multiple NSCs may exist in different brain regions or during various stages of development, and they may not be equally represented in different isolation techniques and/or culture conditions. It is clearly noticeable that the ≤1% cloning efficiency reported by Morshead et al. is significantly lower than the 7–20% reported by other groups2,3,8,14 including ours, suggesting that the cultured NSCs used by Morshead et al. were different from the NSCs used by others, which might provide the basis for the difference in their ability to differentiate into hematopoietic lineages.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Hematology/Bone Marrow Transplantation, Duarte, California, USA

    Chu-Chih Shih & Stephen J. Forman

  2. Division of Surgery, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, California, USA

    Adam Mamelak

  3. Department of Molecular Biology Beckman Research Institute at the City of Hope, Duarte, California, USA

    Chu-Chih Shih & Thomas LeBon

  4. Department of Professional Education City of Hope, Duarte, California, USA

    Thomas LeBon

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  1. Chu-Chih Shih
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  4. Stephen J. Forman
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Shih, CC., Mamelak, A., LeBon, T. et al. Hematopoietic potential of neural stem cells. Nat Med 8, 535–536 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0602-535b

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