Aging
Navigate
Submit an Article
Research Perspective|Volume 2, Issue 4|pp 224—230

How to track cellular aging of mesenchymal stromal cells?

Wolfgang Wagner1, Simone Bork2, Günther Lepperdinger3, Sylvia Joussen1, Nan Ma4, Dirk Strunk5, Carmen Koch1
  • 1Helmholtz Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Department of Cell Biology, RWTH Aachen University Medical School, 52074 Aachen, Germany
  • 2Department of Medicine V, University of Heidelberg, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
  • 3Institute for Biomedical Aging Research, Rennweg 10, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
  • 4Reference and translational center for cardiac stem cell therapy, University of Rostock, 18057 Rostock, Germany
  • 5Stem Cell Research Unit Graz, Medical University of Graz, 8036 Graz, Austria
Received: March 26, 2010Accepted: April 5, 2010Published: April 8, 2010
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100136

Copyright: © 2010 Wagner et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) are currently tested in a large number of clinical trials and raise high hope in regenerative medicine. These cells have to be expanded in vitro before transplantation and several studies demonstrated that long-term culture evokes continuous changes in MSC: proliferation rate decays, the cell size increases, differentiation potential is affected, chromosomal instabilities may arise and molecular changes are acquired. Long-term culture of cell preparations might also have therapeutic consequences, although this has hardly been addressed in ongoing trials so far. Reliable therapeutic regimens necessitate quality control of cellular products. This research perspective summarizes available methods to track cellular aging of MSC. We have demonstrated that gene expression changes and epigenetic modifications are continuously acquired during replicative senescence. Molecular analysis of a suitable panel of genes might provide a robust tool to assess efficiency and safety of long-term expansion.