Culturing at Low Cell Density Delays Cellular Senescence of Human Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Long-Term Cultures
Si-Na Kim, Byeol Choi, Chanju Lee, Jeong Hyun Moon, Min Kyoung Kim, Eun‐Kyung Chung, Sun U. Song
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have immense therapeutic potential for treating intractable and immune diseases. They also have applications in regenerative medicine in which distinct treatments do not exist. Thus, MSCs are gaining attention as important raw materials in the field of cell therapy. Importantly, the number of MSCs in the bone marrow is limited and they are present only in small quantities. Therefore, mass production of MSCs through long-term culture is necessary to use them in cell therapy. However, MSCs undergo cellular senescence through repeated passages during mass production. In this study, we explored methods to prolong the limited lifetime of MSCs by culturing them with different seeding densities. METHODS AND RESULTS: ) MSCs. LD-MSCs suppressed the expression of aging-related genes. We also showed that reactive oxygen species (ROS) were decreased in LD-MSCs compared to that in HD-MSCs. Further, proliferation potential increased when ROS were inhibited in HD-MSCs. CONCLUSIONS: . These results can be used as important data for the mass production of stem cell therapeutic products.