Identification and Characterization of Splenic Adherent Cells forming Densely-Packed Colony

As a first step for identifying hypothetical splenic stem cells for nonhematopoietic cells, densely-packed colony-forming cells were isolated from mouse spleen. Those which we designated as Splenic Adherent Colony-Forming Cells (SACCs) are positive for some of stem cell markers such as alkaline phosphatase and SSEA-1 antigen. We herewith determined global expression profiles of SACCs and control splenic adherent cells. SACCs were prepared form mouse spleen. Splenic adherent cells forming monolayer on culture dish were also prepared as control cells. Then, overall gene expression profiles were determined for SACCs and the control splenic cells by means of DNA microarray analyses and differentially expressed between SACCs and the control splenic cells were subjected to bioinformatics analyses.