Umbilical cord blood (CB) contains a large number of early hematopoietic progenitors with high proliferating capacity and has been used alternatively to bone marrow (BM) for related and unrelated allogeneic transplants. As cell adhesion molecules (CAM) have a crucial role in homing and microevironnment regulation, we compared CAM expression in CB and BM progenitors in order to investigate a possible advantage of CB.

We studied by three colour cytofluorimetric analysis the expression of CD49d, CD49e, CD44, CD11 and CD62L in the subsets of CB and BM CD34+/CD38+ and CD34+/CD38- cells to identify the phenotypic pattern or more immature progenitors. CAM expression was evaluated after exposure of CD34+ cells to different combinations of cytokines (SCF, IL-3, FLT3 ligand) for 4-24 hours.

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