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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 18|pp 7996—8014

Differential effects of extracellular vesicles from aging and young mesenchymal stem cells in acute lung injury

Ruoqiong Huang1, Chaojin Qin1, Jiangmei Wang1, Yaoqin Hu1, Guoping Zheng2, Guanguan Qiu2, Menghua Ge2, Huikang Tao1, Qiang Shu1, Jianguo Xu2,3
  • 1Children’s Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310052, China
  • 2Shaoxing Second Hospital, Shaoxing, Zhejiang 312000, China
  • 3First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310003, China
* Equal contribution
Received: March 22, 2019Accepted: September 21, 2019Published: September 29, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102314

Copyright © 2019 Huang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Old age is a known risk factor for mortality in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)/acute lung injury. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) possess potent immunomodulatory properties, while aging MSCs have reduced capacity. Recent studies have demonstrated that MSC-derived extracellular vesicles (MSC-EVs) are able to mimic MSCs in alleviating acute lung injury. The goals of this study were to determine whether EVs from young and aging MSCs had differential effects on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced lung injury in young mice and unravel the underlying mechanisms. Our results showed that both aging and young MSC-EVs had similar physical and phenotypical properties. As their parental cells, young MSC-EVs alleviated LPS-induced acute lung injury, while aging MSC-EVs did not exhibit the protective effects. In contrast to young MSC-EVs, aging MSC-EVs failed to alter macrophage phenotypes and reduce macrophage recruitment. In addition, the internalization of aging MSC-EVs by macrophages was significantly lower compared with that of young MSC-EVs. Furthermore, aging and young MSC-EVs differed in levels of several miRNAs relating macrophage polarization. In conclusion, aging and young MSC-EVs have differential effects in alleviating acute lung injury and macrophage polarization, which may be associated with internalization of EVs and their miRNA content.