Comparative Study of Immune Regulatory Properties of Stem Cells Derived from Different Tissues.

authors

  • Di Trapani Mariano
  • Bassi Giulio
  • Ricciardi Mario
  • Fontana Emanuela
  • Bifari Francesco
  • Pacelli Luciano
  • Giacomello Luca
  • Pozzobon Michela
  • Féron Francois
  • de Coppi Paolo
  • Anversa Piero
  • Fumagalli Guido
  • Decimo Ilaria
  • Menard Cedric
  • Tarte Karin
  • Krampera Mauro

abstract

: Allogeneic stem cell (SC)-based therapy is a promising tool for the treatment of a range of human degenerative and inflammatory diseases. Many reports highlighted the immune modulatory properties of some SC types, such as mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), but a comparative study with SCs of different origin, to assess whether immune regulation is a general SC property, is still lacking. To this aim, we applied highly standardized methods employed for MSC characterization to compare the immunological properties of bone marrow-MSCs, olfactory ectomesenchymal SCs, leptomeningeal SCs, and three different c-Kit-positive SC types, that is, amniotic fluid SCs, cardiac SCs, and lung SCs. We found that all the analyzed human SCs share a common pattern of immunological features, in terms of expression of activation markers ICAM-1, VCAM-1, HLA-ABC, and HLA-DR, modulatory activity toward purified T, B, and NK cells, lower immunogenicity of inflammatory-primed SCs as compared to resting SCs, and indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase-activation as molecular inhibitory pathways, with some SC type-related peculiarities. Moreover, the SC types analyzed exert an anti-apoptotic effect toward not-activated immune effector cells (IECs). In addition, we found that the inhibitory behavior is not a constitutive property of SCs, but is acquired as a consequence of IEC activation, as previously described for MSCs. Thus, immune regulation is a general property of SCs and the characterization of this phenomenon may be useful for a proper therapeutic use of SCs.

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