FIGURE 9.

AES enhances the proliferation of CD34+ cells in the presence of NUP98-HOXA9. A, primary human CD34+ cells were retrovirally transduced to express AES, NUP98-HOXA9, both, or neither as described in the legend to Fig. 8. Cells positive for both GFP and YFP were sorted and continually cultured in the presence of cytokines with periodic cell counting and feeding. The cumulative fold-increase in cell numbers compared with day 0 is plotted on a logarithmic scale. B, cells growing in liquid culture were subjected to morphological evaluation by Giemsa staining at weeks 4–6. Representative fields are shown from cells expressing NUP98-HOXA9 alone or NUP98-HOXA9 with AES at week 6 of culture. P, primitive cells; IM, intermediate myeloid cells; MM, mature myeloid cells. Photomicrographs were taken with ×20 and 60 oil objectives. C, a 500-cell differential count was carried out on the Giemsa-stained slides and average numbers from three independent experiments for weeks 4–6 were plotted. For quantification of the different cell types see supplemental Table S1.