Phenotypic Characterization of Murine Primitive Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells Isolated on Basis of Aldehyde Dehydrogenase Activity

Abstract

There are several different technical approaches to the isolation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) with longterm repopulating ability, but these have problems in terms of yield, complexity, or cell viability. Simpler strategies for HSC isolation are needed. We have enriched primitive hematopoietic progenitors from murine bone marrow of mice from different genetic backgrounds by lineage depletion followed by selection of cells with high aldehyde dehydrogenase activity using the Aldefluor reagent (BD Biosciences, Oxford, U.K.

Possible involvement of stem-like populations with elevated ALDH1 in sarcomas for chemotherapeutic drug resistance

“…It functions as a detoxifying enzyme and has been proposed as a common marker for both normal and malignant stem and progenitor cells (17,19,27). ALDH1 activity has been employed successfully as a stem cell marker in retinoblastoma, prostate, pancreas and breast cancer (20,(28)(29)(30). The current study demonstrated that both human osteosarcoma MG63 and human fibrosarcoma HT1080 contained subpopulations with high ALDH activity, approximately 10% of the total cell population, as determined by Aldefluor assay.…”

Cancer Stem Cells in Lung Cancer: Distinct Differences between Small Cell and Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinomas

“…ALDH also contributes to the oxidation of retinol to retinoic acid, a modulator of cell proliferation, which may also modulate stem cell proliferation [62]. Murine and human hematopoietic stem cells [63][64], murine neural stem cells [65], normal and malignant human mammary stem cells [66], and normal and malignant human colorectal stem cells [62,67] exhibit ALDH activity and express this enzyme, strongly suggesting that strong ALDH activity and/or antigen expression can be used as a marker for stem cells in a variety of cancers. ALDH activity has been measured as substrate-oxidizing activity in whole cell lysate, and the expression of the enzyme has been detected by immunoreactions with specific antibodies, such as Western blot and immunohistochemical analyses.…”

From where do Cancer-Initiating Cells Originate?

“…One could then wonder why in sphere cultures, in absence of this niche, cells might display stem-cell properties. A more recent assay has consisted in purifying CSC based on the detoxifying aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1) enzymatic activity, previously detected in a set of normal stemcells (Armstrong et al, 2004;Matsui et al, 2004;Hess et al, 2004). Nonetheless, attempts to isolate breast CSCs according to their antigenic phenotype or to their ALDH1 activity led again to the isolation of different cell subpopulations that at the most partially overlap, suggesting that actually any of these markers are strictly allotted to stem-cells (Al-Hajj et al, 2003;Fillmore and Kuperwasser, 2008;Ginestier et al, 2007).…”