Immunophenotypical characterization of zebrafish heart-derived mesenchymal stem cells

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been considered as an appropriate source for cellular therapy, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine. The effectiveness of MSCs in the treatment of wide ranges of disease including hematopoietic recovery, inflammatory diseases, bone regeneration, infracted myocardium, joint diseases etc. has been well documented; for this reason, isolation and characterization of MSCs from different species for extensive preclinical studies are required. Also, to clarify different aspects of MSCs biology and develop MSCs applications in human diseases treatment, other studies on animal models are required. However, the similarity between zebrafish and human genome has been further examined; zebrafish is considered to be the best for practical purposes in regenerative medicine. The aim of this study was to investigate the immunophenotypical characterization of heart-derived-MSCs for the first time for using zebrafish as a suitable animal model for regenerative medicine in cell therapy. In the present study, MSCs were isolated enzymatically from heart tissue of Zebrafish (Danio rerio) as previously reported in other papers by Fathi et al. (2017). The flow-cytometry, as well as RT-PCR, were used to analyze the expression of a panel of immunological cell surface markers CD44, CD90, CD31, and CD34. In the immunophenotyping analysis, the heart derived-MSCs was found to be immunopositive for mesenchymal stem cell markers (CD44 and CD90), and immunonegative for hematopoietic stem cell markers (CD31 and CD34). These results are, in combination with the RT-PCR results, were also positive and negative for the gene expression of CD44 and CD90 and CD31 and CD34, respectively. These findings are in line with the results of other MSCs; these reactions are generally characteristic of MSCs. Our results show that heart tissuederived MSCs exhibited expression of a typical set of classic MSC surface markers and lack of hematopoietic marker, which will contribute to a more extensive characterization of zebrafish MSCs prior to their use in cell therapy.

کلیدواژه ها:

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) ، Immunophenotypical characterization ، Immunological cell surface marker