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Research Paper|Volume 14, Issue 9|pp 3826—3835

Menstrual blood-derived stem cells and its mitochondrial treatment improve the ovarian condition of aged mice

Qi Zhang1, Chunlei Liu2, Ling Yu3, Xiaona Wang4, Jianxiu Hao5
  • 1Medical School of Chinese PLA, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The First Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China
  • 2Department of Transformation Medicine Center, The Medical Innovation Research Division of Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China
  • 3Senior Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Seventh Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China
  • 4Key Laboratory of RNA Biology, Center for Big Data Research in Health, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
  • 5Department of Clinical Biobank Center, The Medical Innovation Research Division of PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China
* Equal contribution
Received: September 13, 2021Accepted: April 22, 2022Published: May 3, 2022
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204043

Copyright: © 2022 Zhang 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

Aging causes a decline in ovarian function and may contribute to ovarian failure and infertility. We investigated the effect of menstrual blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MenSCs) and their mitochondria on ovarian function in aged mice. We performed two treatment protocols: i) ovaries of recipient aged mice were treated in vivo with MenSCs 3D alginate gel; ii) ovaries were injected with mitochondria suspension and then incubated with mitochondrial 3D gel. Seven days after treatment, ovaries were harvested for histological assessment by HE staining and transcriptomic analysis by RNA-seq. Our data showed that after incubation with stem cell 3D gel, the MenSCs could be detected in the recipient mouse ovary. HE staining showed that the follicular state of aging ovary improved with both treatments. RNA-seq analysis showed that mitochondrial pathway-related genes were upregulated and significantly enriched in the ovaries treated by MenSCs or their mitochondria.

Conclusions: Treatment with MenSCs or their mitochondria can enhance the expression of mitochondrial pathway-related genes and promote the recovery of ovarian function in aged mice.