Effect of chitooligosaccharides on mice hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells

Chitooligosaccharides (COSs) is a kind of polysaccharide scaffolds used to enhance cartilage repair during treatments involving bone marrow stimulation, angiogenesis and osteogenesis increase in vivo. Capabilities of COSs in promoting the proliferation and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells/hematopoietic progenitor cells were mainly explored in the paper. The results showed that a high concentration of COSs significantly proliferate the mice marrow cells and induced CD34+ cells into megakaryocyte progenitor cells. However, COSs could not enhance the proliferation of CD19+ and CD4+ and promote CD34+ cells to differentiate into lymphoid progenitor cells. It suggested that COSs can promote hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells hyperplasia, and the mechanism may be that COSs promote stromal cell secretion of hematopoietic growth factors.