Engraftment and Multilineage Expression of Human Bone Marrow CD34 Cells In Vivoa

Abstract
The fetal sheep competitive engraftment model of human hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) was used to evaluate the in vivo engraftment potential of human bone marrow CD34- Lin- cells. Transplantation of CD34- Lin- cells into primary hosts resulted in the long-term (> 1 year) engraftment and multilineage donor cell/progenitor expression with production of significant numbers of CD34+ cells. Secondary transplantation and limiting dilution studies confirmed the presence in human CD34- fraction of HSC with in vivo long-term engraftment and multilineage differentiation potentials.