The effect of Acellularized Wharton's Jelly-derived exosomes on myeloid differentiation of umbilical cord blood-derived CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells

Abstract Purpose Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has been introduced as an effective treatment for hematological malignancies. Extracellular vesicles including exosomes and microvesicles, have recently attracted researcher’s attention as the main factor in proliferation and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) to accelerate the transplantation. Accordingly, this study aimed to evaluate the effect of exosomes derived from acellular Wharton’s Jelly (WJ) on myeloid differentiation of umbilical cord blood (UCB)-derived CD34+ HSCs. Methods After isolation of CD34+ cells from human UCB via magnetic-activated cell sorting, these cells were cultured and incubated for three weeks. Then, UC-derived WJ was acellularized and used for exosome isolation. Finally, these exosomes were co-cultured with CD34+ cells and their differentiation to myeloid lineage was assessed by flow cytometry and Real-Time PCR. Results The expression of CD33 was higher in the exosome group than that of the control group on day 0 (P Conclusion Overall, these observations indicated that AWJ-exosomes may have no potential impact on myeloid differentiation of CD34+ HSCs derived from UCB.