Freezing of Fresh Wharton's Jelly From Human Umbilical Cords Yields High Post-Thaw Mesenchymal Stem Cell Numbers for Cell-Based Therapies.

Abstract

Some cord blood banks freeze entire pieces of UC (mixed cord, MC) which after post-thaw yields mixed heterogeneous populations of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from all its microanatomical compartments. Freezing of such entire tissues results in sub-optimal post-thaw cell recovery because of poor cryoprotectant diffusion and intracellular ice-formation, heat and water transport issues, and damage to intercellular junctions. To develop a simple method of harvesting pure homogeneous MSCs for cord blood banks, we compared the post-thaw behavior of three groups of frozen UC tissues: (i) freshly harvested WJ without cell separation; (ii) MSCs isolated from WJ (WJSC); and (iii) MC, WJ, and WJSC produced high post-thaw cell survival rates (93.52 ± 6.12% to 90.83 ± 4.51%) and epithelioid monolayers within 24 h in primary culture whereas post-thaw MC explants showed slow growth with mixed epithelioid and fibroblastic cell outgrowths after several days. Viability and proliferation rates of post-thawed WJ and hWJSC were significantly greater than MC. Post-thaw WJ and WJSC produced significantly greater CD24(+) and CD108(+) fluorescence intensities and significantly lower CD40(+) contaminants. Post-thaw WJ and WJSC produced significantly lesser annexin-V-positive and sub-G1 cells and greater degrees of osteogenic and chondrogenic differentiation compared to MC. qRT-PCR analysis of post-thaw MC showed significant decreases in anti-apoptotic gene expression (SURVIVIN, BCL2) and increases in pro-apoptotic (BAX) and cell cycle regulator genes (P53, P21, ROCK 1) compared to WJ and WJSC. We conclude that freezing of fresh WJ is a simple and reliable method of generating large numbers of clinically utilizable MSCs for cell-based therapies.