Bone Marrow Stromal Cell Antigen 1 (BST1)

BST-1 is a stromal cell line-derived glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored molecule that facilitates pre-B-cell growth. The deduced amino acid sequence exhibits 33% similarity with CD38. BST1 expression is enhanced in bone marrow stromal cell lines derived from patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The polyclonal B-cell abnormalities in rheumatoid arthritis may be, at least in part, attributed to BST1 overexpression in the stromal cell population.Ferrero et al. found that CD38 and its paralog BST1 (CD157) map to the same 800-kb restriction fragment in pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, indicating that the 2 human ecto-NADase genes are closely linked. Because the CD38 gene maps to 4p15, this information was incompatible with the report of Kaisho et al. , which indicated that BST1 maps to chromosome 14.