Menstrual Blood Stem Cells:Potential For Liver Repair

Endometrial stem cell, considered as a somatic stem cell, has been studied extensively in recent years. It can be harvested easily and be able to sub-culture for a long time in vitro without any karyotypic abnormality. Many reports showed that they not only display the stem cell markers, such as OCT-4and SSEA-4, but also differentiate into lots of cell lineages and exhibit tissue repair in a variety of diseases. Immune modulation and immune suppression also participate in the process. Because of its lower immunogenicity, immune rejection can be avoided to occur. In addition, no instance of teratoma or ectopic formation was detected in the transplanted animals.In this study, we isolated the putative population of stem cells from human menstrual blood. The cells were proved to express the stem cell-related phenotypic markers, such as CD29, CD73, CD90and CD105, while without the markers CD34, CD45, CD117and HLA DR. The cells in vitro cultured doubled at every24hours. The cells transplanted into the nude mice showed no instance of teratoma or ectopic formation after a-half year follow-up.Secondly, MenSCs were induced to transform into hepatic in vitro under a co-culture system supplemented with liver development-related factors HGF, FGF4and OSM for3weeks. The cells cultured in the specific hepatic conditioned medium display hepatocyte-specific markers like ALB, AFP, CK18/19, and CYPlA1/3A4at cellular and molecular levels, and adopt functional features, such as urea synthesis, glycogen storage, and ICG uptake.Finally, we transplanted the stem cells and the differentiated hepatocyte-like cells into the mice livers of partial hepatectomy. The levels of ALT and AST in the HLCs group were significantly lower than those in the sham group (p<0.05), while the levels of ALB was greatly higher than that in the sham group (p<0.05) at10days after transplantation.8weeks later, human cells were detected in the mice livers and hepatogenic differentiation were proved by demonstration of ALB expressing cells in the MenSCs group. In order to evaluate the capability of reconstruction of the livers. Fah deficient mice were chosen as a liver injured model for transplantation. Fah protein in the recipient liver indicated the reconstitution and repopulation of the injured liver in both the two groups.In all, endometrial stem cells should be an alternative population of seeder cells in liver repair.