Mesenchymal stem cells enhance the metastasis of cervical cancer cell line, caski, in 3d cell culture system

Mahsa Bagherpour,1 Mona farhadi,2 Maryam shahali,3,*

1. Department of Biological Science, Islamic Azad University Karaj Branch, Karaj, Iran
2. Department of Biological Science, Islamic Azad University Karaj Branch, Karaj, Iran
3. Department of Quality Control, Research and Production Complex, Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Introduction

Mesenchymal stem cells, also known as mesenchymal stromal cells (mscs), are attractive for repair and regeneration of tissue or organ defects because of their low immunogenicity, paracrine properties, ease of isolation and expansion, and self-renewal capacity. also, mscs are emerging as promising anti-cancer agents which have an enormous potential to be utilized to treat a number of different cancer types such as lung cancer, kaposi's sarcoma. however, recent studies have shown controversial results regarding whether mscs promote or suppress tumor growth and progression. to investigate the impact of human adipose derived mscs (had-mscs) on caski, a human cervical cancer cell line, during co-culture.

Methods

Had-mscs were cultured in alginate gel (alg) beads, and then co-cultured with caski cell line. the effect of hmscs on cell morphological and molecular behavior of caski line cells was assessed by microscopic observation and real time pcr after 24 and 48 hours of co-culture.

Results

Quantitative real time pcr analysis shown that compared with the control groups, the level of mrna expression of cd44, csc biomarker, in the cocultured group, caski cells with beads containing had-msc, was significantly upregulated (p˂0.05). we also measured the expression of emt-related genes. consistent with the observed morphological changes, the levels of n-cadherin, vimentin was significantly increased in the co-cultured group compared with that in the control group (p˂0.05).

Conclusion

Our results indicated that hmscs have an active role in tumour initiation, promotion, progression and metastasis. therefore, mscs would not be a suitable optimal treatment strategy for patients with cervical caner. however, further complementary data such as the results of tumorigenic in vitro and in vivo assays of the co-cultured/co-injected caski cell line with hmscs and its comparison with the control group should be collected to fully confirm the function of hmsc-mediated tumor cell promotion in a human cervical cancer cell line, caski.

Keywords

Alg beads, coculture