Cell-based therapy represents a promising strategy in the treatment of neurological disorders. Human umbilical cord tissue has recently been recognized as an ideal source of mesenchymal stromal cells due to accessibility, vast abundance and safety. Here, an intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) rat model was established by injection of bacterial collagenase VII and CM-DiI labeled human umbilical cord tissue derived mesenchymal stromal cells (UC-MSC) were intracerebrally transplanted into rat brain 24h after ICH. The results demonstrated that UC-MSC treatment significantly improved neurological function deficits and decreased injury volume of ICH rats. Leukocytes infiltration, microglial activation, ROS level and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) production were substantially reduced in peri-ICH area in cell-treated group as compared with PBS control at day 3 post-transplantation. In addition, UC-MSC treatment significantly increased vascular density in peri-ICH area and transplanted UC-MSC were found to be able to incorporate into cerebral vasculature in ipsilateral hemisphere at 14 days after transplantation. In summary, intracerebral administration of UC-MSC could accelerate neurological function recovery of ICH rat, the underlying mechanism may ascribe to their ability to inhibit inflammation and promote angiogenesis. Thus UC-MSC may provide a potential cell candidate for cell-based therapy in neurological disorders.
UC-MSC transplantation could accelerate neurologic functional recovery of rats after stroke, which may be mediated by their ability to promote angiogenesis.
In contrast to hematopoietic stem cells, there is still a lack of definitive cell markers for specific isolation and identification of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Thus a homogenous population of MSCs is only obtained after several passages, when multilineage potential or other distinctive features of very early progenitors may be already somewhat compromised. Recently a novel surface marker the neural ganglioside GD2 has been reported to distinguish MSCs from all other cells within marrow. Here, we found that MSCs derived from umbilical cord (UC-MSCs) also expressed this marker at early-passages. More importantly, UC-MSCs were the only cells within umbilical cord expressing this marker. Compared to unsorted cells, GD2+-sorted cells not only possessed much higher clonogenicity and proliferation capacity but also had significantly stronger multi-differentiation potentials. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that GD2+-sorted cells showed increased expression of SSEA-4, Oct-4, Sox-2 and Nanog, the typical markers expressed in embryonic stem cells, in comparison to unsorted or GD2-negative MSCs. Take together, our data demonstrate that the cells selected by GD2 are a subpopulation of MSCs with feature of primitive precursor cells and provide evidence that GD2 can be a cell surface marker suitable for the isolation and purification of UC-MSCs in early-passage culture.
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