title: Comparison of epithelial differentiation and immune regulatory properties of mesenchymal stromal cells derived from human lung and bone marrow.
abstract: Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) reside in many organs including lung, as shown by their isolation from fetal lung tissues, bronchial stromal compartment, bronchial-alveolar lavage and transplanted lung tissues. It is still controversial whether lung MSCs can undergo mesenchymal-to-epithelial-transition (MET) and possess immune regulatory properties. To this aim, we isolated, expanded and characterized MSCs from normal adult human lung (lung-hMSCs) and compared with human bone marrow-derived MSCs (BM-hMSCs). Our results show that lung-MSCs reside at the perivascular level and do not significantly differ from BM-hMSCs in terms of immunophenotype, stemness gene profile, mesodermal differentiation potential and modulation of T, B and NK cells. However, lung-hMSCs express higher basal level of the stemness-related marker nestin and show, following in vitro treatment with retinoic acid, higher epithelial cell polarization, which is anyway partial when compared to a control epithelial bronchial cell line. Although these results question the real capability of acquiring epithelial functions by MSCs and the feasibility of MSC-based therapeutic approaches to regenerate damaged lung tissues, the characterization of this lung-hMSC population may be useful to study the involvement of stromal cell compartment in lung diseases in which MET plays a role, such as in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
authors.affiliation: Stem Cell Research Laboratory, Section of Hematology, Department of Medicine, University of Verona, Verona, Italy.
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ricciardi
authors.forename: Giorgio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Malpeli
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bifari
authors.forename: Giulio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bassi
authors.forename: Luciano
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Pacelli
authors.forename: Armel Hervé
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Nwabo Kamdje
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chilosi
authors.forename: Mauro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Krampera
mesh_terms: D001854:Bone Marrow Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D002454:Cell Differentiation / Q000502:physiology; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D058750:Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D016130:Immunophenotyping; D008168:Lung / Q000166:cytology*; D059630:Mesenchymal Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction