Neural differentiation of adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells

Abstract

The limited neurodegenerative power, makes from neural disorders the most challenging and difficult therapy among different diseases. till now, the traditional surgical and medical interventions only slow down the progression of these neurodegenerative diseases but the number of neurons are still diminish in many patients. Now, the mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy has attracted the great attention of most scientists and clinicians around the world to be used as a therapeutic potential source for different neurodegenerative disorders. Stem cells have been found all over the body and can be obtained from different tissues as; adipose tissue, bone marrow and blood. MSCs characterized by high proliferation and differentiation abilities, providing a source of neurons and glia for cell replacement therapy. Also, MSCs show neuroprotective effects without any genetic modification and not show teratoma. Lately, scientist directed toward differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells toward neural cells using different growth factors and chemicals. In the current study, we have tested the effect of ATRA in a dose 10μM and heparin in a dose of 50μg as neural inducers either for dopaminergic or cholinergic neurons. The results indicate that both retinoic acid and heparin are positively neural inducers. Also found that heparin mixed with retinoic acid give better results. These results were confirmed using RT-PCR for MAP2, β-tubulinІІІ, ChAT, TH neural genes markers.