Cell therapy is an innovative strategy for tissue repair, since adult stem cells could have limited regenerative ability as in the case of myocardial damage. This leads to a local contractile dysfunction due to scar formation. For these reasons, refining strategy approaches for "in vitro" stem cell commitment, preparatory to the "in vivo" stem cell differentiation, is imperative. In this work, we isolated and characterized at molecular and cellular level, human Amniotic Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (hAMSCs) and exposed them to a physical Extremely Low Frequency Electromagnetic Field (ELF-EMF) stimulus and to a chemical Nitric Oxide treatment. Physically exposed cells showed a decrease of cell proliferation and no change in metabolic activity, cell vitality and apoptotic rate. An increase in the mRNA expression of cardiac and angiogenic differentiation markers, confirmed at the translational level, was also highlighted in exposed cells. Our data, for the first time, provide evidence that physical ELF-EMF stimulus (7 Hz, 2.5 µT), similarly to the chemical treatment, is able to trigger hAMSC cardiac commitment. More importantly, we also observed that only the physical stimulus is able to induce both types of commitments contemporarily (cardiac and angiogenic), suggesting its potential use to obtain a better regenerative response in cell-therapy protocols.
Keywords: ELF-EMF; Nitric Oxide; angiogenic commitment; cardiac commitment; hAMSCs; regenerative medicine.