Abstract
The aim of this study is to identify rat nasal septum respiratory mucosa-derived mesenchyme stem cells (RM-MSCs) and to compare its neural lineage differentiation capacity with bone marrow-derived mesenchyme stem cells (BM-MSCs) after a short period of neural induction culture in vitro. The cell morphology was observed with light microscopy; cell proliferation was assessed by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT). The characteristics of the cells were evaluated with flow cytometry, immunofluorescence, real-time quantitative PCR (RT-PCR), and Western blotting. The results showed that rat nasal respiratory mucosa contains RM-MSCs that exhibited similar proliferation rate as BM-MSCs in vitro. Both RT-PCR and Western blotting analyses demonstrated that RM-MSCs showed higher expression of neural lineage markers than BM-MSCs after a short period of neural induction culture, and secreted higher level of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. RM-MSCs were more amenable to differentiate into neural or glial cell after a short period of neural induction culture than BM-MSCs in vitro; and it could be considered as another optimal source of stem cells for cell-based therapy to neurological diseases.