MSCs in co-culture with CLL cells acquire a CAF-like phenotype.

Human primary mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) were either left untreated, treated with 3 µg/ml/day GRN, or co-cultured with CD19-sorted CLL cells of two different patients for 5 days. Gene expression of the MSCs was quantified using an Illumina HumanHT-12 v4 Expression BeadChip. Thereby, genes assigned to 454 Illumina probes were identified to be significantly altered by CLL co-culture compared to control MSCs cultured alone (analysed dataset provided). MSCs in co-culture with CLL cells resembled a CAF-like phenotype. There were no significant transcriptional changes detected in GRN treated compared to untreated MSCs. The control group (n=4) comprised primary MSCs of four different donors (#1-4) cultured without additional treatment. The GRN group (n=4) comprised MSC 1-4, which were treated with GRN. The CLL group (n=4) comprised MSC1 and MSC2, which were each co-cultured with CLL cells derived from two different patients.