Thy-1 antigen expression by murine high-proliferative capacity hematopoietic progenitor cells. I. Relation between sensitivity to depletion by Thy-1 antibody and stem cell generation potential.

Hematopoietic stem cells of high proliferative potential such as the giant macrophage colony-forming cell HPP-CFC, were present in the marrow of mice treated with high dose 5-fluorouracil (5Fu) (150 mg/kg i.v.), whereas most committed granulocyte-macrophage progenitors, GM-CFU-C, were depleted. Enrichment of primitive stem cells in post 5-Fu bone marrow (5FuBM) was reflected in an enhanced capacity to proliferate in suspension cultures stimulated by the mixture of lymphokines present in Con A spleen-conditioned medium supernatant (Con A CM) when compared to normal bone marrow. The population of blast-like cells harvested at 5 days from suspension cultures of 5FuBM with Con A CM showed marked increases in stem cells GM-CFU-C and HPP-CFC. For this reason, 5FuBM was utilized to study the cell surface characteristics of putative pluripotential stem cells capable of giving rise to committed stem cells in suspension cultures. Treatment of 5FuBM (BDF1 mice) before suspension culture with a high concentration of either of two cytotoxic monoclonal antibodies directed against the Thy-1.2 surface antigen in the presence of rabbit complement reduced or abrogated the generation of stem cells HPP-CFC and GM-CFU-C in suspension cultures, even though the input content of HPP-CFC and GM-CFU-C in treated 5FuBM compared with control 5FuBM showed little reduction by the antibody plus complement treatment. The Thy-1+ cell required for generation of stem cells was not a T cell, because reconstitution of Thy-1.2-depleted 5FuBM with spleen nylon nonadherent (T) cells did not reconstitute the generation of stem cells, even though T cells did grow in the suspension cultures. In addition, depletion from 5FuBM of cells expressing Lyt-1 and Lyt-2 antigens, unambiguous markers of T cell-thymocyte differentiation, did not ablate the generation of HPP-CFC and GM-CFU-C. Rather, performance of Thy-1 cell depletion at lower efficiency, which still abrogated T cell function, ablated generation of HPP-CFC but did not affect the generation of GM-CFU-C. It was concluded that 5FuBM contains distinct Thy-1+ primitive stem cells expressing different amounts of Thy-1 antigen correlating with their respective generation potentials. Some of these Thy-1+ progenitor cells may be pluripotential.