Transplantation of freshly isolated adipose tissue-derived regenerative cells enhances angiogenesis in a murine model of hind limb ischemia

Abstract

Therapeutic angiogenesis has emerged as one of the most promising therapies for severe ischemic cardiovascular diseases with no optional therapy. Several investigators have reported that transplantation of cultured adipose-derived regenerative cells (cADRCs) to ischemic tissues promotes neovascularization and blood perfusion recovery; however, cell therapy using cultured cells has several restrictions. To resolve this problem, the angiogenic capacity of freshly isolated ADRCs (fADRCs) obtained from Lewis rats was compared with cADRCs, both in vivo and in vitro. Flow cytometric analysis showed that fADRCs contained several cell types such as endothelial progenitor cells and endothelial cells; however, these cells were present in a very small proportion in cADRCs. Transplantation of fADRCs in mice significantly improved blood perfusion, capillary density, and production of several angiogenic factors in transplanted ischemic limbs compared with a saline-injected group, whereas these effects were not observed in the cADRCs-injected group. fADRCs also showed significantly higher expression levels of angiogenic factors than cADRCs in the in vitro study. Furthermore, fADRC stimulated tube formation more remarkably than cADRC in an in vitro tube formation assay. These results suggested that fADRCs have an effective angiogenic capacity, and they would be more valuable as a source for cell-based therapeutic angiogenesis than cADRCs or other stem/progenitor cells.