Abstract
Emerging evidence suggests amniotic epithelial cells (AECs) as a promising source of progenitor cells in regenerative medicine and bone tissue engineering. However, investigations comparing the regenerative properties of AECs with other sources of stem cells are particularly needed before the feasibility of AECs in bone tissue engineering can be determined. This study aimed to compare human amniotic epithelial cells (hAECs), human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (hBMSCs), and human amniotic fluid derived mesenchymal stem cells (hAFMSCs) in terms of their morphology, proliferation, immunophenotype profile, and osteogenic capacity in vitro and in vivo. Not only greatly distinguished by cell morphology and proliferation, hAECs, hAFMSCs, and hBMSCs exhibited remarkably different signature regarding immunophenotypical profile. Microarray analysis revealed a different expression profile of genes involved in ossification along the three cell sources, highlighting the impact of different anatomical origin and molecular response to osteogenic induction on the final tissue-forming potential. Furthermore, our data indicated a potential role of FOXC2 in early osteogenic commitment.
Highlights
With the progress of regenerative medicine, especially in the field of stem cells and biomaterials, stem cell-based bone tissue engineering has been recognized as a promising strategy for reconstruction of bone defects resulting from trauma, congenital malformations, and surgical resections [1,2,3,4]
Human amnion membranes were obtained from healthy mothers undergoing cesarean sections; human amniotic fluid was obtained by ultrasound-guided amniocentesis performed on pregnant women for routine prenatal diagnosis purposes at gestational ages ranging from 18 to 22 weeks; human bone marrow was obtained from women patients with alveolar cleft undergoing autogenous bone grafting
Human amniotic epithelial cells have been drawing increasing interest as a source of progenitor cells for regenerative medicine based on their phenotypic plasticity, immunomodulatory properties, and ready availability with no ethical issue involvement [14, 15, 18, 22, 29]
Summary
With the progress of regenerative medicine, especially in the field of stem cells and biomaterials, stem cell-based bone tissue engineering has been recognized as a promising strategy for reconstruction of bone defects resulting from trauma, congenital malformations, and surgical resections [1,2,3,4]. Mesenchymal stem cells, more recently described as mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), have been successfully isolated from various regions of the body and have been suggested as a promising stem cell source for bone tissue engineering evidenced by extensive in vitro and in vivo studies [4,5,6,7,8,9]. Previous and extensive studies have shown that amniotic epithelial cells from different species such as rat, sheep, and human possess combined qualities of both embryonic and adult stem cells and retain a remarkable plasticity [13,14,15,16,17]. HAECs have been shown to possess trilineage differentiation ability in vitro and express markers of both mesenchymal and embryonic stem cells (ESCs) [11, 14, 17, 18].
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