The feasibility of isolating and manipulating mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from human patients provides hope for curing numerous disease and disorders. Recent phenotypic analysis showed heterogeneity of MSCs. A nestin progenitor cell is a subpopulation within MSCs which plays a role in pancreas regeneration during embryogenesis. This study aimed to separate nestin (+) cells from human bone marrow-MSCs, and differentiate these cells into functional insulin-producing cells (IPCs) compared with nestin (-) cells. Manual magnetic separation was performed to obtain nestin (+) cells from MSCs. Approximately 91±3.3% of nestin (+) cells were positive for the anti-nestin antibody. Pluripotent genes were overexpressed in nestin (+) cells compared with nestin (-) cells as revealed by quantitative real time-PCR (qRT-PCR). Following in vitro differentiation, flow cytometric analysis showed that 2.7±0.5% of differentiated nestin (+) cells were positive for anti-insulin antibody in comparison with 0.08±0.02% of nestin (-) cells. QRT-PCR showed higher expression of insulin and other endocrine genes in comparison with nestin (-) cells. While the immunofluorescence technique showed the presence of insulin and C-peptide granules in nestin (+) cells. Therefore, our results introduced nestin (+) cells as a pluripotent subpopulation within human MSCs which is capable to differentiate and produce functional IPCs.
نوع مطالعه:
Original Article |
موضوع مقاله:
Stem Cell دریافت: 1398/2/4 | پذیرش: 1398/4/22 | انتشار: 1398/9/15