Transduction of recombinant human erythropoietin receptor cDNA into daughter progenitors derived from single CD34(3+) cord blood cells changes the differentiation profile of daughter progenitors.

In this study, we tested the capacity to change the differentiation profile of progenitor cells by retroviral-mediated transduction of EpoR cDNA into one of the paired daughter cells derived from single CD34(3+) CB cells. Our results show that for the non-viral-treated daughter cells, the majority (99.6%) formed the same colony type. However, with cells transduced with viral vectors, 7.1% of the daughter cells transduced with the EpoR cDNA formed either a burst forming unit-erythroid (BFU-E) or a colony-forming unit-granulocyte, macrophage, erythroid, megakaryocyte (CFU-GEMM) colony compared to the other daughter cell transduced with viral supernatant lacking EpoR cDNA, which formed either a colony-forming unit granulocyte-macrophage (CFU-GM) or a high proliferative potential-colony forming cell (HPP-CFC) colony. Expression of the transduced EpoR cDNA was confirmed in individual colonies by RT-PCR analysis. These results substantiate in a more rigorous fashion our previous results that it is possible to change the Epo-responsive differentiation profile of progenitor cells by transduction into these cells of an EpoR cDNA and this change was apparent only in daughter cells derived from single CD34(3+) kit+ cells transduced with EpoR cDNA.