Ex vivo amplification kinetics of cord blood hematopoietic progenitor cells in one- and two-step hypoxic response-mimicking cultures (HRMC)

In order to facilitate the transfer of our technique of expansion of cord blood hematopoietic cells to the industrial scale, we investigated if our two-step ex vivo expansion cultures can be transformed in one-step cultures. For this purpose, the cultures are initiated with the definitive medium volume and with the cell concentrations proportionally decreased. It turned out that the one-step cultures have different kinetics of cell expansion comparing to two-step cultures. However, the one-step cultures can produce more committed progenitors if maintained for 12 days than two-step ones, which can be a non-negligible advantage. To use these cultures in clinical trials it is necessary to check the activity of the hematopoietic stem cells after expansion using in vivo repopulation models.