An In Vitro Comparison of Anti-Tumoral Potential of Wharton’s Jelly and Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells Exhibited by Cell Cycle Arrest in Glioma Cells (U87MG)

The therapeutic potential of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for various malignancies is currently under investigation due to their unique properties. However, many discrepancies regarding their pro-or anti-tumor properties have raised uncertainty about their application for anti-cancer therapies. In order to investigate, if the pro- or anti-tumoral properties are subjective to the type of MSCs under different experimental conditions we set out these experiments. Three treatments namely cell lysates (CL), serum free conditioned media (SFCM) and FBS conditioned media (FBSCM) from each of Wharton’s Jelly-MSCs and Bone Marrow-MSCs were applied to evaluate anti or pro-tumoral effect on U87MG glioma cells. Fibroblast cell line was added as a control of normal cell. Functional analysis included; Morphological evaluation, proliferation and migration potential, cell cycle analysis and apoptosis. We found that cell lysates induced a generalized inhibitory effect on the glioma cells and fibroblasts from both types of MSCs. On the other hand, conditioned media exerted a specific inhibitory effect on the growth and migration potential of the glioma cells only. In addition, paracrine factors collected in serum free conditions exhibited likewise inhibitory effect on the glioma cells as FBSCM, regardless of the type of MSCs. However, serum in conditioned media may modulate the microenvironment of the glioma cells by stimulating the fibroblasts. Furthermore, we found that the cell cycle was arrested significantly at G1 phase which may have lead to inhibit the proliferative and migratory abilities of the glioma cells (U87MG). We conclude that cell extracts of WJ-MSCs and BM-MSCs in the form of secretome can induce specific anti-tumor properties in serum free conditions and the effect is mediated by cell cycle arrest at G1 phase.