Title: Therapeutic potential of paracrine factors derived from mesenchymal stem cells

Abstract:

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are multipotent stromal cells that can be isolated from various types of tissues including bone marrow, adipose tissue, and umbilical cord, and can differentiate into mesodermal lineages including adipocytes, osteoblasts and chondrocytes 1–7 Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have come up as a potential therapeutic for the treatment of various types of diseases 4,8. In the first place, the mechanism of the recuperative effect of MSCs was based on their potential of replacing damaged cells. However, entrapment of MSCs primarily in the lung microvasculature and other organs like the liver and spleen rather than target tissue following direct administration of MSCs via systemic route showed that the therapeutic potential of these cells could result from their secretome content. In addition, MSCs that are entrapped in the lung and not able to stay alive longer than 48 hours have also ameliorative effects 3. It was also shown that MSCs are providing tissue regeneration by inducing differentiation of resident progenitor cells rather than their direct differentiation 9. All these findings indicate that paracrine factors secreted by MSCs could be the main route of therapeutic action of MSCs. Furthermore, direct application of MSCs has its limitation including the risk of tumorigenicity, complications related to cryopreservation of the cells, and loss of stemness potential with increasing passages 10. Self-renewal and differentiation potential of MSCs tend to worsen with increased donor age, genetics, environmental stress, and increased number of in vitro passaging 5. These data imply the necessity of improving the therapeutic potential of MSCs, especially in the case of autologous isolation 11,12. At this point, preconditioning of MSCs with different strategies like treating them with certain chemical agents, incubating them in hypoxic conditions, or culturing them with scaffolds mimicking ideal microenvironment could increase or compensate for the disease-related loss of therapeutic potential 13,14. In this context, I will share our experience in the field of the therapeutic potential of CM derived from MSCs in the recent 5 years in correlation with new findings put forward in the literature.

Biography:

Serbay Ozkan completed his bachelor’s degree in the fields of molecular biology and genetics and chemistry (double major program) at Bogaziçi University (which is one of the top universities in Turkey). He performed a comparative characterization of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) obtained from different regions of the umbilical cord and evaluated their ultrastructural morphologies during osteogenic and adipogenic differentiation in his master’s degree. He continued his studies in the field of MSCs during the doctorate program. In this respect, he evaluated the therapeutic potential of conditioned mediums obtained from MSCs which are preconditioned or not on diabetic nephropathy. His studies on the field of extracellular vesicles and conditioned medium derived from MSCs continue. He is also giving lectures as a histologist and embryologist at Izmir Katip Celebi University Medical Faculty.