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Delineating the Hepatocyte's Hematopoietic Fusion Partner
Holger Willenbring and Markus Grompe
volume 3 | issue 12
december 2004Pages: 1489 - 1491
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Cell fusion has evolved as an explanation of how transplanted bone marrow cells adopt the phenotype of hepatocytes, Purkinje neurons, skeletal and cardiac muscle cells. In vivo nuclear transfer associated with cell fusion has direct implications for regenerative medicine, but the spontaneous frequency of cell fusion is well below the threshold of therapeutic significance. Increased efficiency could be achieved by utilizing cellular factors known to govern fusion but for this the identity of the hematopoietic cell that fuses with the host cell must be known. Using increasingly lineage-restricted donor bone marrow cell populations we have shown in mouse liver that fusion occurs between host hepatocytes and transplanted myelomonocytic cells such as macrophages. Now it should be feasible to increase the efficiency and assess the potential of cell fusion for the correction of a broad range of somatic cell types that can be targeted by fusion.
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDF If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.