The Induction And Differentiation Study Of The Rats' Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells Transfected With Nurr1 Gene

Background Parkinson disease, characterized by the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons, is a common neurodegenerative disease mostly affecting middle-aged and old people. There are no effective treatments for PD at present, cell transplantation is considered hopeful. MSCs show stem-cell-like characters with the capability of self-renew and multi-differentiation. MSCs can easily be obtained and auto-transplanted, eliminating immune reaction of cell transplantion therapy. MSCs are recogonized as a potential cell source for cell transplantion therapy of PD. However, the induction of MSCs differentiated into neuronal cells with dopaminergic phenotype remain to be solved. Nurr1, as a transcription factor of thyroid hormone/retinoic acid nuclear receptor superfamily, is specifically required for the induction of midbrain dopamine neurons. It was reported that neural stem cell could be induced into dopaminergic neurons when genetically modified by Nurr1 gene, whether MSCs have the similar differentiation characters by Nurr1 gene transfection is unknown.Objective To explore the effects of Nurr 1 gene transfection and total Panax notoginseng saponins (tPNS) /retinoic acid (RA) to induce MSCs differentiating into dopaminergic neron-like cells. Methods Expressing plasmid pcDNA3.1-hygro-Nurr1 was constructed, then were transfered into MSCs with lipofectamine 2000. The expression of Nurr1 gene was identified by immunocytochemistry. Cells expressing Nurr1 were induced to differentiate into neuron-like cells by adding tPNS/RA into the medium, the expression of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), acetylcholinesterase (AchE), g-aminobutyric acid (GABA) in the differentiated cells were detected by immunocytochemistry.The percentage of postive cells in the Nurr1 +tPNS/RA group were compared with tPNS/RA group, Nurr1 group and control group in order to determine the effects of Nurr1 gene modification...