Improving Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cell Engraftment by Ex Vivo Expansion of Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells

The general aim of this thesis was to improve and optimize the ex vivo expansion and subsequent in vivo engraftment of Hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC). It was hypothesized that the combination of growth factors stimulating proliferation with promising factors that reportedly inhibit differentiation and enhance self-renewal of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) would result in robust ex vivo HSC expansion.