Unexpected Evidence That Dimethylsulphoxide (Dmso) Upregulates Expression Of Cxcr4 On Hematopoietic Stem/Progenitor Cells (Hspc), Increases Their Responsiveness To An Sdf-1 Gradient And Enhances Homing To Bone Marrow.

Cryopreservation of bone marrow (BM), mobilized peripheral blood (mPB) and cord blood (CB) cells is a routine procedure to store hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPC) for transplantation. Dimethylsulphoxide (DMSO), the most commonly used cryoprotectant, is toxic to cells at higher concentrations (>10%); moreover, the freezing-thawing procedure itself is inevitably connected with the loss of HSPC. However, by chance we observed that short exposure of HSPC to DMSO enhances the responsiveness of these cells to an SDF-1 gradient and since SDF-1 is a major chemoattractant that navigates homing of HSPC to BM we became interested in elucidating this phenomenon. We found that short incubation (5–10 min) of human CB mononuclear cells (MNC) with DMSO at concentrations employed for cryopreservation (5–10%) significantly upregulates the expression of both CXCR4 (x 2–3) and CD34 (x 1.5) on CB MNC (as measured by FACS). Furthermore, DMSO significantly increased the chemotactic responsiveness (x 2–4) of CB MNC, BM MNC and selected CXCR4+ human hematopoietic cell lines (Jurkat, THP-1 cells) when the cells were exposed to 5–10% DMSO before chemotaxis assay. These responses to an SDF-1 gradient correlated with enhanced chemotaxis also of human CD34+, CD34+ CD38+, CD34+ CD38−, and CD34+ CXCR4+ clonogeneic progenitor cells, suggesting that DMSO directly enhances the responsiveness of human early progenitors (p<0.0001). At the molecular level, 5–10% DMSO strongly stimulated and prolonged SDF-1-dependent AKT phosphorylation. However, at the same time DMSO inhibited phosphorylation of MAPKp42/44. Similar observations were made for Sca-1+ BM-derived murine cells. In parallel experiments we found that murine Sca-1+ cells when preincubated with DMSO formed more 12 day-CFU-S colonies in spleens after transplantation into irradiated syngeneic recipients. Accordingly, x 2 more CFU-S were formed when Sca-1+ cells were exposed before transplantation to 5% DMSO and about x 4 more after exposure to 10% DMSO. Finally we employed a Ly5.1/Ly5.2 congeneic transplant model and showed that transplantation of Ly5.1 Sca-1+ cells exposed to 10% DMSO before transplantation resulted in higher chimerism in transplanted Ly5.2 mice as compared to untreated cells (control) (p<0.0001). In conclusion, we show for the first time an unexpected beneficial role of DMSO (5–10%) in regulation of homing of HSPC after transplantation and suggest that a short priming of HSPC with DMSO, even of non-cryopreserved cells, before transplantation may become a new strategy to enhance engraftment