Cellule staminali: studio di base, espansione ed applicazioni in ingegneria tissutale

Stem cells are very rare and this represents a big problem for clinical application. The use of umbilical cord blood, that could be a good alternative source of stem cells, is limited because of the poor number of stem cell that is not sufficient for transplantation. Accordingly, it will be very important to develop an assay to expand ex-vivo stem cell population. At the same time, for stem cell application in tissue engineering (for example bone tissue engineering) it could be very important to prepare a scaffold. This is why we studied an assay for ex-vivo expansion of hematopoietic stem cells isolated from cord blood and we did a screening of biomaterials for bone tissue engineering. A previous work reported that interleukin (IL)-16 can induce CD34+ hematopoietic cells to proliferate and differentiate in-vitro into phenotypically and functionally mature DCs. In this study, the effects of IL-16 on the expansion of CD34+ cells from human cord blood were investigated. IL-16 added to a basal cocktail (BC) composed of stem cell factor (SCF), Flt-3 ligand (FL), thrombopoietin (TPO), IL-6 e IL-3,of cytokines significantly enhanced the expansion of CD34+ cells, CD34+CD38-, early stem cells progenitor cells and long-term-culture-initiating-cells (LTC-IC). Moreover, CD34+ cells expanded with IL-16 maintained the capacity to differentiate into the lymphoid-B and -NK lineage. The addition of IL-16 to BC increased the migratory capacity of expanded CD34+ cells compared to BC alone and decreased the percentage of CD34+CD4+ cells. Overall, this study suggests that IL-16 may have a new role in promoting the expansion of hematopoietic stem cells and may represent a new tool for the expansion of CD34+ cells for clinical applications (Paper I). Scaffolds of different composition have been analysed to develop a novel multiphase biomaterial able to promote osteogenic differentiation of rabbit mesenchymal stem cells (rMSC). Results demonstrated that the multi-phase PCL/TZ-HA system showed improved rMSCs adhesion and osteoblast differentiation, thus demonstrating great potential for bone regeneration. (Paper II). Recent advances in tumour progression introduce the concept of cancer stem cells. According to this hypothesis, it will be important to identify new tumour markers and to develop new therapeutic strategies. Previous works demonstrated that increased expression of Eph receptors and their ephrin ligands have been implicated in promoting angiogenesis and tumour progression in several malignancies. Here the expression of mRNA for ephrin-B and EphB receptors in rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) cell lines and primary tumours were measured. A dysregulation of both ligands and receptors was found in all cell lines. A global up-regulation of ephrin-Bs and EphB receptors in RMS tumours was found. In embryonal tumours, a correlation between ligand and receptor was found. A correlation between EphB2 and EphB4 receptors was demonstrated in both tumour types. The dysregulation of ephrin-B and Eph-B in RMS and the correlations between ligand and receptors and between EphB2 and EphB4 suggest a possible role for ephrin-B and EphB in RMS development (Paper III).