Functional properties of bone marrow derived multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells are altered in heart failure patients, and could be corrected by adjustment of expansion strategies

Background: Bone marrow multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (BM-MMSC) considered as a prospective substrate for cell therapy applications, however adult stem cells could be affected by donor-specific factors: age, gender, medical history. Our aim was to investigate how HF affects the functional properties of BM-MMSC. Materials and methods: BM-MMSC from 10 healthy donors (HD), and 16 donors with chronic HF were evaluated for proliferative activity, ability to differentiate, replicative senescence, expression of genes that affect regeneration and fibrosis. The effect of culturing conditions on efficiency of BM-MMSC expansion was determined. Results: HF-derived BM-MMSC demonstrated early decrease of proliferative activity and upregulation of genes that control both, regeneration and fibrosis: Tgf-beta pathway, synthesis of ECM, remodeling enzymes, adhesion molecules. We assume that these effects were related to increase of frequency of myofibroblast-like CD146+/SMA alpha+ CFU-F in HF samples; (ii) low seeding density and hypoxia resulted in predominant purification and expansion of CD146+/SMA alpha- CFU-Fs. (iii) the activity of NPs system was downregulated in HF BM-MMSC; Conclusions: downregulation of NP signaling in combination with upregulation of Tgf-beta pathway in BM-MMSC would result in pro-fibrotic phenotype and make these cells non-effective for therapeutic applications; the corrections in culturing strategy resulted in 2(3)-2(7) increase of expansion efficiency.