Homing of human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells to the injured kidney and their protective effects / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:An increasing number of studies have shown that mesenchymal stem cels have the potential to treat acute kidney injury. Umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cels have general characteristics of stem cels and many advantages, such as easy to isolate and culture, in vitrofast amplification, low immunogenicity and no ethical problems, which have garnered increasing attentions. OBJECTIVE:To study the repairing effects of human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cels on acute kidney injury in rats. METHODS: Thirty rats were randomized into three groups a normal control group, a model group and a cel transplantation group. Rats in the model and cel transplantation were subjected to clamping the renal pedicles for 45 minutes, and then injected 1 mL of DAPI-labeled umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cels or 1 mL of saline via the tail vein. In the normal control group, the kidney was only exposed with no treatment. At 7 days after treatment, the rats were kiled to take left kidney tissues for pathological observation under light microscope and right kidney for observation of DAPI-positive cel counting. Automatic biochemical analyzer was used to detect serum creatinine and urea ammonia levels. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Compared with the model group, the levels of serum creatinine and urea ammonia were significantly lower in the cel transplantation group (P < 0.05), suggesting that human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cels can improve the kidney function to a certain extent. Pathological findings showed that the pathological damage was improved more remarkably in the cel transplantation group than the model group, and the tubular necrosis index decreased significantly in the cel transplantation group. At 7 days after cel transplantation, blue fluorescent cels were scattered on renal tissue frozen sections. These results indicate that human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cels can migrate to the injured tubular epithelial tissues, and promote the repair of the injured kidney.