Studies on the efficacy, safety and quality of the tissue engineered products: enhancement of proliferation of human mesenchymal stem cells by the new polysaccharides

Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) have the capacity to proliferate and differentiate into multiple cells etc. Polysaccharides can modulate the cell proliferation of human endothelial cell. Here, we investigated the role of different kinds of new polysaccharides to regulate the gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) and cell proliferation of cultured normal human dermal fibroblasts (NEDF) cells and hMSCs. The NHDF cells and hMSCs were cultured for 4 days with new polysaccharides. The cultures were then analyzed to verify the extent of GJIC by the scrape-loading dye transfer (SLDT) method, using Lucifer yellow. Alamar blue staining was performed to determine the proliferation of the cultured cells. In NHDF cells, the GJIC was significantly inhibited in cells treated with different kinds of new polysaccharides. On the contrary, in hMSCs, the GJIC was slightly inhibited in all cultured treated cells. But proliferation was enhanced in both cells with different polysaccharides, the extents of cell proliferation was stronger in hMSCs than in NHDF cells. These findings reveal that new polysaccharides seem to play an important role in hMSCs, thus provide a novel tool on tissue engineering.