Bone mesenchymal stem cell-conditioned medium decreases the generation of astrocytes during the process of neural stem cells differentiation

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of bone mesenchymal stem cell (BMSC) conditioned medium (CM) and Bone morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP-4) on the generation of astrocytes during the process of NSCs differentiation.

Design: Neural stem cells (NSCs) were grown under different culture conditions.

Setting: The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China.

Outcome Measures: The study consisted of four groups: NSCs cultured under control conditions (group 1) or with the addition of BMSC-CM (group 2);(BMP-4) (group 3) or both (group 4).The expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) was detected by immunocytochemical staining and Western blotting.

Results: The expression of GFAP was higher in Group3 and lower in Group 2 compared to that in Group 1. The expression of GFAP in Group 4 was intermediate between that of Group 2 and Group 3.

Conclusions: These results suggest that BMSC-CM can decrease the generation of astrocytes and that the inhibition of the (BMP-4) /Smad1/5/8 signaling pathway may be the underlying mechanism. This phenomenon may be mediated by increasing the expression of Smad6.

Keywords:

• Neural stem cell differentiation
• Astrocytes
• BMP-4/SMAD signaling pathway
• Bone morphogenetic protein-4
• Bone mesenchymal stem cells conditioned medium

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81472088) and Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (No.1508085MH152).

Data archiving

There were no data to deposit.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Disclosure

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

ORCID

Xiaoying Liu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3450-5683