Transplantation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells exerts a greater long-term effect than Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cells in a chronic myocardial infarction model in rat

Aims
To assess the long-term effect of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) transplantation in a rat model of chronic myocardial infarction (MI) in comparison with the effect of bone marrow mononuclear cells (BM-MNC) transplant.

Materials and Methods
5 weeks after induction of MI, rats were allocated to receive intramyocardial injection of 10 GFP-expressing cells (BM-MNC or MSC) or medium as control. Heart function (echocardiography and (1)F-FDG-microPET) and histological studies were performed 3 months after transplantation and cell fate was analyzed along the experiment (1, 2 weeks and 1, 3 months).

Results
The main findings of this study were that both BM-derived populations, BM-MNC and MSC, induced a long-lasting (3 months) improvement in LVEF (BM-MNC: 26.61 +/- 2.01% to 46.61 +/- 3.7%, P<0.05; MSC: 27.5 +/- 1.28% to 38.8 +/- 3.2%, P<0.05) but remarkably, only MSC improved tissue metabolism quantified by (1)F-FDG uptake (71.15 +/- 1.27 to 76.31 +/- 1.11, P<0.01) which was thereby associated with a smaller infarct size and scar collagen content and also, with a higher revascularization degree.

Conclusions
Altogether, results show that MSC provides a long-term superior benefit than whole BM-MNC transplantation in a rat model of chronic MI.

CITA DEL ARTÍCULO Cell Transplant. 2010;19(3):313-28