Comparative Evaluation of Cardiac Markers in Differentiated Cells from Menstrual Blood and Bone Marrow-Derived Stem Cells In Vitro

Abstract

In recent years, menstrual blood-derived stem cells (MenSCs) have been introduced as easily accessible and refreshing stem cell source without ethical considerations in the field of regenerative medicine. The aim of this study was to investigate in vitro cardiac differentiation capacity of MenSCs compared to bone marrow-derived stem cells (BMSCs) under two protocols using 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-aza) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF). Our data revealed that differentiated MenSCs and BMSCs acquired some features of cardiomyocytes; however, degree of differentiation was dependent on the protocol. In a similar manner with BMSCs, differentiated MenSCs showed upper levels of mRNA/protein of late-stage cardiac markers under 5-aza stimulation and continuous treatment with bFGF (protocol 2) compared to those induced by 5-aza alone (protocol 1) evidencing the key role of bFGF in cardiac development of stem cells. Compared to corresponding undifferentiated cells differentiated MenSCs under protocol 2 showed remarkable expression of connexin-43 and TNNT2 at both gene and protein levels, whereas developed BMSCs under the same condition only expressed connextin-43 at the higher level. Superiority of protocol 2 over protocol 1 was confirmed by assessment of LDH and cTnI production by differentiated cells. Based on the accumulative data, our study provided convincing evidence that MenSCs have relatively higher capability to be differentiated toward cardiomyocyte compared with BMSCs. Furthermore, usage of bFGF and 5-aza to induce in vitro cardiac differentiation of MenSCs is highly recommended.

Endometrial and Menstrual Blood Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cells: Biological Properties and Clinical Application

“…This suggests that FGF2 has a key role in differentiating cardiac cells from MSC sources. MenSC had greater capacity than bmMSC to differentiate toward cardiomyocytes regardless of the differentiation protocol (Rahimi et al, 2014).…”

Fabrication of hydrogel based nanocomposite scaffold containing bioactive glass nanoparticles for myocardial tissue engineering

“…Differentiation capacity of these cells toward different lineage such as osteoblast, adipoblast, oligodendrocyte progenitor cell and neuron have been investigated in some studies [33,34]. Rahimi et al used menstrual blood stem cells to be differentiated to cardiomyocytes and found higher differentiation potential of this cells toward cardiomyocytes compared with BMSCs [35].…”

Human menstrual blood: a renewable and sustainable source of stem cells for regenerative medicine

“…MenSCs express OCT-4, whereas BMSCs do not [ 36 – 38 , 41 ]. Unlike with other MSCs, expression of MSCs markers, CD29, CD44, and CD90 in MenSCs reduced to less than 95% when the cultured cells reached P10, indicating a declined stemness activity of MenSCs upon more passaging.…”

“…Interestingly, this inferiority in osteogenic differentiation can be successfully overcome by substitution of human platelet lysate with FBS. MenSCs were more able to be specialized into cardiomyocytes than BMSCs [ 41 ]. Although the ability of MenSCs to differentiate into neural cells was inferior to BMSCs, the levels of functional calcium, potassium, and sodium channel genes in MenSCs during the process of differentiation were significantly higher than those in BMSCs [ 42 ].…”