Hematopoietic and Endothelial Progenitor Cells from Mouse Adult Testis Derived Stem Cell Lines.

Adult mouse testis was recently found to harbour multipotent adult germline stem cells (maGSC) with the differentiation capacity along several mesodermal and epithelial lineages. We here addressed the hematopoietic potential from three multipotent germline stem cell lines in vitro. In the undifferentiated state, these cells expressed stem cell markers including Sca1, Thy1 and c-kit, but lacked markers of definitive hematopoiesis such as CD45. On exposure to in vitro culture conditions favouring hematopoietic differentiation, these cells gave rise to both primitive erythropoiesis with nucleated red blood cells expressing ζ-globin, and definitive hematopoiesis, forming β-globin positive erythroid and myeloid colonies in colony assays. On OP9 stroma cells, the maGSC lines formed mesoderm-like colonies, from which progenitor cell populations for either endothelial or hematopoietic differentiation were isolated. The differentiation patterns and efficiencies were similar to the results obtained from the mouse embryonic stem cell line MPI2. In summary, adult germline derived stem cell lines can be induced to recapitulate early embryonic hemangioblastic development and may thus serve as tools for studies on hematopoietic and angioblastic development as well as applications in regenerative medicine.