Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) delivered from various sources have been focused on cartilage tissue engineering. However MSCs have the limited capacity to fully differentiate into chondrocytes and form intact cartilage tissues. Many studies now suggest...
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) delivered from various sources have been focused on cartilage tissue engineering. However MSCs have the limited capacity to fully differentiate into chondrocytes and form intact cartilage tissues. Many studies now suggest that fetal stem cells are more plastic than adult stem cells, and hence more efficient in differentiating into target organs. The aim of our study was to investigate the characteristics of fetal cells-derived cartilage tissue (FC cells) in comparison with human bone marrow (BM)-derived MSCs. Our hypothesis was that fetal cartilage-derived stem cells (FC cells) have characteristics similar to BM-derived MSCs.
Human fetal cartilage-derived stem cells (FC cells) were isolated from the human fetus at 12 weeks after gestation with the approval from IRB at Ajou University Medical Center. The cells were cultured in monolayer over passages 0 to 6 and analyzed for surface markers of human MSCs, hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and embryonic stem cells (ESCs) by flow cytometry. The FC cells at passage 2 were analyzed for the chondrogenic, adipogenic and osteogenic differentiation ability in vitro for 21 days. RT-PCR analyzes for collagen type 1, collagen type 2, sox9 and aggrecan.
The FC cells grew well in a monolayer culture with a spindle morphology similar to that of human BM-derived MSCs. The flow cytometry analyses showed that the FC cells were positive for the expression of MSCs markers (CD29, CD44, CD58, CD90, CD105, CD166), ESCs marker (SSEA-4) but negative for CD34, CD45, CD117, a HSCs marker. The FC cells were also differentiated into the chondrogenic lineage, based on the Safranin O staining and RT-PCR analysis results. The expression of collagen type 2 was induced while that of collagen type 1 was reduced after chondrogenic differentiation for 3 weeks, when compared with those in monolayer culture. Unexpectedly, the expression of aggrecan was not induced significantly in the RT-PCR analysis. The chondrogenic differentiation potential of the FC cells was quite comparable with that of human BM MSCs. When examined with the Oil red O staining. Also the FC cells were clearly differentiated into the adipogenic lineage and by the Alizarin red staining, FC cells differentiated into the osteogenic lineage. We showed that the FC cells had high differentiation potential into the adipogenic and osteogenic lineages comparable to that of human BM MSCs. Our data suggests that the FC cells would be a useful source of cell therapy for regeneration of damaged cartilage.