Nucleated red blood cells as a novel indicator of CD34 cell content in umbilical cord blood.

Background: Umbilical cord blood (UCB) has become an important source of transplantable CD34 hematopoietic progenitor cells. Cord blood banks (CBBs) can increase their efficiency by minimizing the processing of UCB units with low CD34 content, which have a lower likelihood of transplant utilization. We sought to identify a readily available preprocessing metric that would correlate with CD34 cell counts, without the cost of additional analysis.

T(H)1, T(H)2, and T(H)17 cells instruct monocytes to differentiate into specialized dendritic cell subsets.

Monocytes and T helper (T(H)) cells rapidly infiltrate inflamed tissues where monocytes differentiate into inflammatory dendritic cells (DCs) through undefined mechanisms. Our studies indicate that T(H) cells frequently interact with monocytes in inflamed skin and elicit the differentiation of specialized DC subsets characteristic of these lesions. In psoriasis lesions, T(H)1 and T(H)17 cells interact with monocytes and instruct these cells to differentiate into T(H)1- and T(H)17-promoting DCs, respectively.