Endocrine Abstracts

Umbilical-Cord mesenchymal stem cells (UC-MSCs) have shown a defined role in regeneration of potential parts of the body through their capability of trilineages differentiation and secretion of immunomodulatory molecules. Also, the physical contact of UC-MSC with immune cells plays critical roles in mediating immunomodulation which create a regenerative microenvironment for tissue repair. In this study, we carried out a bioinformatic analysis of previously published gene expression datasets (two human datasets GSE147114 and GSE220781) (Mishra, Sevak et al. 2020, Zhou, Cai et al. 2024) to identify the downregulated genes in umbilical cord blood derived MSC (UCB-MSC) and umbilical cord tissue derived MSC (UCT-MSC) cells with their biological processes and pathways. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were generated using GE02R while functional enrichment was performed in GSEA and IntAct. The study analysed two human GEO datasets GSE147114 and GSE220781, 1168 and 2428 down-regulated genes were found, respectively. Among these genes, 133 common genes were identified by Venn diagram analysis. GSEA analysis of common genes revealed that these genes were assigned to immune response as well as significantly enriched in translocation of ZAP-70 to Immunological synapse pathway. IntAct interaction analysis showed that Zap70 interact with several genes are associated with the T cell receptor signalling pathway and predominantly linked to immune response. Overall, the featured genes could be exploited as biomarkers to identify immunoregulatory activity of UC-MSCs and thus contributes to MSC-based therapies for various inflammatory diseases.

Reference: Mishra, S., et al. (2020). ‘Umbilical cord tissue is a robust source for mesenchymal stem cells with enhanced myogenic differentiation potential compared to cord blood.’ Sci Rep 10(1): 18978. Zhou, Y., et al. (2024). ‘Mesenchymal stem/stromal cells from human pluripotent stem cell-derived brain organoid enhance the ex vivo expansion and maintenance of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells.’ Stem Cell Research & Therapy 15(1): 68.