Diamond Blackfan anaemia: differential pattern of in vitro progenitor response to macrophage inflammatory protein 1-alpha

The congenital disorder of erythropoiesis Diamond Blackfan anaemia (DBA) exhibits a defect in the stem/progenitor cell compartment, located at the erythroid progenitor level (CFU-GEMM, BFU-E, CFU-E). Treatment of DBA with interleukin-3 (IL-3) has had limited effect, despite in vitro studies suggesting that progenitor cells were capable of responding to IL-3. Whether IL-3 is not reaching the appropriate defective target cell, the cells cannot respond, or the marrow humoral inhibitory system is overriding it, is not clear. To investigate humoral inhibitory activities we examined the response of 15 DBA bone marrows in vitro to the inhibitory chemokine macrophage inflammatory protein 1-α (MIP1-α) in the presence of the stimulatory cytokines erythropoietin, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor, IL-3, and stem cell factor. In vitro data agreed with our previous work showing that our patients formed three statistically different groups in response to stimulatory cytokines (type I DBA erythroid colony numbers≈ normal > type II DBA > type III DBA). Addition of MIP1-α to cultures caused average erythroid and myeloid suppression, which sequentially increased with DBA type (type I inhibition < type II < type III). The differential level of inhibition shown by MIP1-α in these DBA patients lends further evidence for the presence of distinct subgroups in this disorder.