Assessment of ability of human adipose derived stem cells for long term overexpression of IL-11 and IL-13 as therapeutic cytokines

Adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) are a type of mesenchymal stem cells with the therapeutic effects that make them one of the best sources for cell therapy. In this study, we aimed to assess the ability of human ADSCs for constant expression of IL-11 and IL-13, simultaneously. In this study, the characterized hADSCs were transduced with a lentiviral vector (PCDH-513B) containing IL-11 and IL-13 genes, and the ability of long-term expression of the transgenes was evaluated by ELISA technique on days 15, 45 and 75 after transduction. Our results indicated a high rate of transduction (more than 90%) in the isolated hADSCs. Our data showed the highest rate of expression on days 75 after transduction which was 242.67 pg/ml for IL-11 and 303.6 pg/ml for IL-13 compared with 35.2 pg/ml and 35.6 pg/ml in untreated cells, respectively (p = 0.001). Besides, MTT assay showed transduction of hADSCs with lentiviral viruses containing IL-11 and IL-13 had no adverse effect on hADSCs proliferation (p-value = 0.89). Finally, we successfully constructed a hADSC population stably overexpressing IL-11 as the neurotrophic cytokine and IL-13 as the anti-inflammatory cytokine and this transduced cells can be used for further studies in EAE mice model.