Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Induces Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Differentiation into Endothelial Cells

摘要

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are pluripotent progenitors and can differentiate into a variety of cell types, including osteoblasts, chondrocytes, and adipocytes. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) has been shown to stimulate endothelial cell mitogenesis and migrations. To investigate whether VEGF could induce rat bone marrow-derived MSCs differentiation into endothelial cells, we isolated and cultured rat bone marrow-derived MSCs from the femur of the Sprague-Dawley rats. MSCs were treated with VEGF for 2, 4, 7 days. The cellular morphology changes of MSCs were observed under phase contrast microscope. Then we tested the expression of endothelial cell markers VEGF receptor fms-related tyrosine kinase 1 (Flt-1) by reverse-transcription PCR (RT-PCR), western blot, and immu-nofluorescence technology. Our results showed that the expression levels of Flt-1 were significantly increased in time-dependent manner. The above results show that VEGF can induce mesenchymal stem cells differentiation into endothelial cells. The data provides the basis of constructing tissue engineering vascular.