Expression of osteoblast-specific genes in immortalized rat dental follicle cells / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:During in vitro culture, dental folicle cels are easy to loss self-renewal capacity and become aging, and they are also very difficult to be purified and amplified in quantity, which limits the application of dental folicle cels in periodontal tissue engineering. OBJECTIVE:To study the osteogenic effect of immortalized rat dental folicle cels. METHODS:pSSR69-pAmpho plasmids containing SV40T-Ag were used to transfect 293 cels. Rat dental folicle cels were transfected with virus supernatant and screened by hygromycin to establish immortalized rat dental folicle cels (experimental group). Untransfected cels served as controls. RT-PCR was used to detect the osteogenic related factors (alkaline phosphatase, osteocalcin, bone morphogenetic protein 2, and Runx2) in the experimental group and control group. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:The results showed no statistical differences between the experimental group and the control group in the expressions of alkaline phosphatase, bone morphogenetic protein 2 and Runx2 (P > 0.05). The expression of osteocalcin was significantly higher in the experimental group than the control group (P < 0.05). These findings suggest that in the late osteogenesis differentiation, immortalized rat dental folicle cels may promote the secretion of osteocalcin and then make osteoblasts early entry into the bone calcification stage.