title: Correlation between proliferative activity and cellular thickness of human mesenchymal stem cells.
abstract: A cell's shape is known to be related to its proliferative activity. In particular, large and flat mammalian adult stem cells seem to show slow proliferation, however using quantitative analysis to prove the phenomenon is difficult. We measured the proliferation and cellular thickness of human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) by atomic force microscopy and found that MSCs with high proliferative activity were thick while those with low proliferative activity were thin, even though these MSCs were early passage cells. Further, low proliferative MSCs contained many senescence-associated beta-galactosidase positive cells together with high senescence-associated gene expression. These findings suggest that the measurement of cellular thickness is useful for estimating the proliferative activity of human MSCs and is expected to be a practical tool for MSC applications in regenerative medicine.
authors.affiliation: Research Institute for Cell Engineering, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 3-11-46 Nakoji, Amagasaki, Hyogo 661-0974, Japan.
authors.forename: Yoshihiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Katsube
authors.forename: Motohiro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hirose
authors.forename: Chikashi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Nakamura
authors.forename: Hajime
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ohgushi
mesh_terms: D049109:Cell Proliferation; D048429:Cell Size; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D006801:Humans; D059630:Mesenchymal Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods*