Human cord blood conditioned medium enhances leukemia colony formation in vitro

Childhood T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is one of the most common childhood cancers. Recently, we observed that pre-conditioning sub-lethally irradiated immunodeficient mice with human cord blood mononuclear cells facilitates in these mice high level engraftment of primary T-ALL cells obtained from patients. Here we report that human cord blood cells secrete a factor(s) which markedly enhances in vitro both colony number and burst size of the T-ALL clonogenic progenitors from patients. The enhancing activity does not correspond to IL-2, IL-15, nor to several other cytokines implicated in T cell proliferation/activation. Thus, it is possible cord blood may secrete an as yet unidentified factor(s) acting on leukemia clonogenic progenitors of T-ALL. Collectively, these studies should prove invaluable in addressing the growth properties of primary T-ALL cells from patients.