Extracellular vesicles from human iPSCs enhance reconstitution capacity of cord blood-derived hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells

Cord blood (CB) represents a source of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (CB-HSPCs) for bone marrow (BM) reconstitution, but clinical CB application is limited in adult patients due to the insufficient number of CB-HSCPCs and the lack of effective ex vivo approaches to increase CB-HSPC functionality. Since human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) have been indicated as donor cells for bioactive extracellular vesicles (EVs) modulating properties of other cells, we are the first to employ hiPSC-derived EVs (hiPSC-EVs) to enhance the hematopoietic potential of CB-derived CD45(dim)Lin(-)CD34(+) cell fraction enriched in CB-HSPCs. We demonstrated that hiPSC-EVs improved functional properties of CB-HSPCs critical for their hematopoietic capacity including metabolic, hematopoietic and clonogenic potential as well as survival, chemotactic response to stromal cell-derived factor 1 and adhesion to the model components of hematopoietic niche in vitro. Moreover, hiPSC-EVs enhanced homing and engraftment of CB-HSPCs in vivo. This phenomenon might be related to activation of signaling pathways in CB-HSPCs following hiPSC-EV treatment, as shown on both gene expression and the protein kinases activity levels. In conclusion, hiPSC-EVs might be used as ex vivo modulators of CB-HSPCs capacity to enhance their functional properties and augment future practical applications of CB-derived cells in BM reconstitution.