Effects of transplanted mesenchymal stem cells on repair of the lung tissue of rats with experimental pulmonary fibrosis

Abstract

Pulmonary fibrosis is one of the commonest forms of interstitial lung diseases with poorly studied methods of its treatment in both human and veterinary medicines. Therefore, this paper focused on seeking alternative methods of its diagnostics and treatment. The article provides the results of the study of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of rats with experimental lung fibrosis and influence of transplanted allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells of the bone marrow on stimulation of regenerative processes in damaged lung tissues. The studies were conducted on female Wistar rats with pulmonary fibrosis modeled using single transthoracic injection of solution of bleomycin hydrochloride. For the purpose of treatment, we used allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells introduced by various methods and the traditional treatment. We determined that best normalization of the parameters of the studied brochoalveolar lavage occurred in animals that received mesenchymal stem cells. The most active repair processes were in the experimental group that received the mesenchymal stem cells directly to the lung tissue. The animals that received intravenous injection of mesenchymal stemm cells were observed to have lower clinical parameters of the brochoalveolar lavage, but still better than such in the group treated traditionally. The lowest parameters were in animals that received the traditional treatment; they were greater than the phisological parameters, but significantly exceeded them in animals of the control group, indicating presence of inflammatory process in the lung tissue. The conducted cytological assays of the samples of the brochoalveolar lavage revealed that experimental animals with experimental pulmonary fibrosis had development of macrophage and lymphocytic reactions under the influence of transplanted mesenchymal stemm cells. We observed no atypical cells in all the experimental groups. This allows us to draw a conclusion that using stem cells by various methods of transplantation does not stimulate the onset of negative reactons (formation of atypical cells, metastatic processes, etc). Thus, the results of the study of the influence of transplanted mesenchymal stem cells demonstrate that in the conditions of experimental pulmonary fibrosis, the activity of regenerative processes in pathologically altered lung tissue may be an effective method of treatment of animals with this kind of pathology.