Date of Graduation

5-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Biomedical Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Rao, Raj

Abstract

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are a population of stromal cells found traditionally in the bone marrow and adipose tissues. They can also be found in other tissues including fallopian tube, core blood, peripheral blood, fetal liver, and lungs. Mesenchymal stem cells have profound effects in regenerative engineering, tissue repair and drug discovery owing to the excellent properties such as proliferation, self-renewal, and multipotency generating multiple cell types including adipocytes, osteocytes, cardiomyocytes (CMs), pericytes (PCs), and chondrocytes. MSCs are used as immunomodulators in generating progenitor cells to be used for transplantation, creating engineered organs, and preventing graft vs. host disease (GVHD). MSCs can differentiate into vascular lineages such as endothelial and smooth muscle cells (SMCs) which have a necessity for creating personalized cell therapies such that SMCs are considered a critical component of tissue-engineered vascular grafts. However, the use of mesenchymal stem cells is restricted by specific factors including their scarceness in tissues, donor age, culture media, origin of the cells, and gene expression profiles. For example, although adipose-derived and bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells share many biological characteristics, they have some differences that affect their differentiation density, proliferation density, gene expression that results in different osteogenic and chondrogenic differentiation capacity. Consequently, these differences should be taken into consideration when planning stem cell-based therapy using MSCs. The goal of this research was to determine the effect of cell line-specific differences, specifically the donor origin, on the differentiation of Ad-MSCs towards SMCs. This goal was achieved using Ad-MSCs from a 30-year old Hispanic female (ATCC1 cell line) as staining control, then comparing the expression of myosin heavy chain 11 (MYH11) between Ad-MSCs taken from a 24-year old Caucasian female (82726 cell line) and a 29-year old native American female (99375 cell line) after 4-day differentiation into SMCs using flow cytometer and FlowJo® software to analyze the data. The results proved that the donor’s origin influences the differentiation of Ad-MSCs towards SMCs.

Keywords

Adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells; Smooth muscle cells; Origin of the donor.

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