Comparison of Epithelial Differentiation and Immune Regulatory Properties of Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Derived from Human Lung and Bone Marrow

PLoS One

Marco Chilosi¹  Giorgio Malpeli¹  Giulio Bassi²  Francesco Bifari²  Luciano Pacelli²  Armel Hervé Nwabo Kamdje²  Mario Ricciardi²  Mauro Krampera² 

[1] Section of Pathological Anatomy, Department of Pathology and Diagnostics, University of Verona, Verona, Italy;Stem Cell Research Laboratory, Section of Hematology, Department of Medicine, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

关键词: Cell differentiation;    Lung development;    Lungs;    Cytoskeletal proteins;    Mesenchymal stem cells;    Nestin;    T cells;    Epithelial cells;   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.pone.0035639

学科分类：医学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) reside in many organs including lung, as shown by their isolation from fetal lung tissues, bronchial stromal compartment, bronchial-alveolar lavage and transplanted lung tissues. It is still controversial whether lung MSCs can undergo mesenchymal-to-epithelial-transition (MET) and possess immune regulatory properties. To this aim, we isolated, expanded and characterized MSCs from normal adult human lung (lung-hMSCs) and compared with human bone marrow-derived MSCs (BM-hMSCs). Our results show that lung-MSCs reside at the perivascular level and do not significantly differ from BM-hMSCs in terms of immunophenotype, stemness gene profile, mesodermal differentiation potential and modulation of T, B and NK cells. However, lung-hMSCs express higher basal level of the stemness-related marker nestin and show, following in vitro treatment with retinoic acid, higher epithelial cell polarization, which is anyway partial when compared to a control epithelial bronchial cell line. Although these results question the real capability of acquiring epithelial functions by MSCs and the feasibility of MSC-based therapeutic approaches to regenerate damaged lung tissues, the characterization of this lung-hMSC population may be useful to study the involvement of stromal cell compartment in lung diseases in which MET plays a role, such as in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

【 授权许可】

CC BY