A matter of identity — Phenotype and differentiation potential of human somatic stem cells

Abstract

Human somatic stem cells with neural differentiation potential can be valuable for developing cell-based therapies, including treatment of birth-related defects, while avoiding issues associated with cell reprogramming. Precisely defining the "identity" and differentiation potential of somatic stem cells from different sources, has proven difficult, given differences in sets of specific markers, protocols used and lack of side-by-side characterization of these cells in different studies. Therefore, we set to compare expression of mesenchymal and neural markers in human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (UC-MSCs), pediatric adipose-derived stem cells (p-ADSCs) in parallel with human neural stem cells (NSCs). We show that UC-MSCs at a basal level express mesenchymal and so-called "neural" markers, similar to that we previously reported for the p-ADSCs. All somatic stem cell populations studied, independently from tissue and patient of origin, displayed a remarkably similar expression of surface markers, with the main difference being the restricted expression of CD133 and CD34 to NSCs. Expression of certain surface and neural markers was affected by the expansion medium used. As predicted, UC-MSCs and p-ADSCs demonstrated tri-mesenchymal lineage differentiation potential, though p-ADSCs display superior chondrogenic differentiation capability. UC-MSCs and p-ADSCs responded also to neurogenic induction by up-regulating neuronal markers, but crucially they appeared morphologically immature when compared with differentiated NSCs. This highlights the need for further investigation into the use of these cells for neural therapies. Crucially, this study demonstrates the lack of simple means to distinguish between different cell types and the effect of culture conditions on their phenotype, and indicates that a more extensive set of markers should be used for somatic stem cell characterization, especially when developing therapeutic approaches.

Towards reconstruction of epithelialized cartilages from autologous adipose tissue-derived stem cells

“…There was an increase in the TEER in pADSCs grown in epithelial induction media, consistent with increased tight junction formation, that plateaued after 2 weeks (Figure e). As pADSCs do not express endothelial markers, as shown in previous studies (Guasti et al ., ; New et al ., ) and in the Supplementary material online, Figure S2, these data are consistent with their ability to undergo epithelial differentiation.…”

“…Differentiation of ADSCs along adipogenic, chondrogenic and osteogenic lineages was induced as previously described (Guasti et al ., ; New et al ., ). Epithelial differentiation was induced in confluent pADSCs, seeded on plastic with or without Matrigel™ (BD Biosciences, Oxford, UK), by the addition of complete medium containing 5 μ m retinoic acid (Brzoska et al ., ) for 3 weeks unless otherwise stated.…”

“…Adipose‐derived stem cells exhibit similar characteristics to the widely studied bone marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs); however, ADSCs have the added benefit that a greater quantity of stromal stem cells can be isolated from adipose tissue (Colazzo et al ., ). In addition, previous studies have established the plastic nature of paediatric ADSCs (pADSCs) (Guasti et al ., ; New et al ., ). Their potential to differentiate towards a number of cell types from different germ lines (Heneidi et al ., ) offers a wide range of potential therapeutic applications.…”

Aldehyde dehydrogenase activity of Wharton jelly mesenchymal stromal cells: isolation and characterization

“…The phenotype of a cellular product is an important issue for optimal cell-based therapy (New et al 2015) and the phenotype of WJ-MSCs was often investigated (Van Pham et al 2016;Walecka et al 2017). Progenitors cells may display difference for CD54, 58, 106, 146 and CD200 depending of their origins (Najar et al 2010a;Najar et al 2012;Vishnubalaji et al 2012;Huang et al 2010).…”

Stem cell delivery to kidney via minimally invasive ultrasound-guided renal artery injection in mice

“…To determine the effect of labelling on the differentiation potential of ADSCs, a differentiation assay was performed as previously described 33 . Control and GNR labelled ADSCs were plated in 24-well plates (Corning) at a concentration of 0.22 x 10 5 per well in triplicates.…”