Characteristics of human amniotic fluid mesenchymal stem cells and their tropism to human ovarian cancer

PLoS One. 2015 Apr 16;10(4):e0123350. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0123350. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

The mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from amniotic fluid (AF) have become an attractive stem cells source for cell-based therapy because they can be harvested at low cost and avoid ethical disputes. In human research, stem cells derived from AF gradually became a hot research direction for disease treatment, specifically for their plasticity, their reduced immunogenicity and their tumor tropism regardless of the tumor size, location and source. Our work aimed to obtain and characterize human amniotic fluid mesenchymal stem cells (AFMSCs) and detect their ovarian cancer tropsim in nude mice model. Ten milliliters of twenty independent amniotic fluid samples were collected from 16-20 week pregnant women who underwent amniocentesis for fetal genetic determination in routine prenatal diagnosis in the first affiliated hospital of Harbin medical university. We successfully isolated the AFMSCs from thirteen of twenty amniotic fluid samples. AFMSCs presented a fibroblastic-like morphology during the culture. Flow cytometry analyses showed that the cells were positive for specific stem cell markers CD73,CD90, CD105, CD166 and HLA-ABC (MHC class I), but negative for CD 45,CD40, CD34, CD14 and HLA-DR (MHC class II). RT-PCR results showed that the AFMSCs expressed stem cell marker OCT4. AFMSCs could differentiate into bone cells, fat cells and chondrocytes under certain conditions. AFMSCs had the high motility to migrate to ovarian cancer site but didn't have the tumorigenicity. This study enhances the possibility of AFMSCs as drug carrier in human cell-based therapy. Meanwhile, the research emphasis in the future can also put in targeting therapy of ovarian cancer.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amniotic Fluid / cytology*
  • Animals
  • Cell Differentiation
  • Cells, Cultured
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Mesenchymal Stem Cells / cytology
  • Mesenchymal Stem Cells / physiology*
  • Mice, Nude
  • Octamer Transcription Factor-3 / genetics
  • Ovarian Neoplasms / pathology*
  • Pregnancy
  • Thy-1 Antigens / metabolism
  • Tropism
  • Xenograft Model Antitumor Assays

Substances

  • Octamer Transcription Factor-3
  • POU5F1 protein, human
  • Thy-1 Antigens

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (NO.81242092) URL: http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/, Heilongjiang innovation experiment program (NO.201310226045) URL:http://125.223.1.200/hljgj/, and State Key Basic Research and Development Project of China (2012CB526700) URL:http://www.most.gov.cn/.