The in vitro suitable action distance between umbilical cord blood-derived hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells and its feeder cell, human adipose-derived stem cells, during their co-culture, was investigated through a novel transwell co-culture protocol, in which the distance between the two culture chambers where each cell type is growing can be adjusted from 10 to 450 mu m. The total cell number was determined with a hemacytometer, and the cell morphology was observed under an inverted microscope each day. After 7 days of co-culture, the fold-expansion, surface antigen expression of CD34(+) and CFU-GM assay of the hematopoietic mononuclear cells (MNCs) were analyzed. The results showed that there was an optimal communication distance at around 350 mu m between both types of stem cells during their in vitro co-culture. By using this distance, the UCB-MNCs and CD34(+) cells were expanded by 15.1 +/- 0.2 and 5.0 +/- 0.1-fold, respectively. It can therefore be concluded that the optimal action distance between stem cells and their supportive cells, when cultured together for 7 days, is of around 350 mu m.