Transcriptional Profiling Reveals Crosstalk Between Mesenchymal Stem Cells and Endothelial Cells Promoting Prevascularization by Reciprocal Mechanisms

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) show great promise in blood vessel restoration and vascularization enhancement in many therapeutic situations. Typically, the co-implantation of MSCs with vascular endothelial cells (ECs) is effective for the induction of functional vascularization in vivo, indicating its potential applications in regenerative medicine. The effects of MSCs-ECs-induced vascularization can be modeled in vitro, providing simplified models for understanding their underlying communication. In this article, a contact coculture model in vitro and an RNA-seq approach were employed to reveal the active crosstalk between MSCs and ECs within a short time period at both morphological and transcriptional levels. The RNA-seq results suggested that angiogenic genes were significantly induced upon coculture, and this prevascularization commitment might require the NF-κB signaling. NF-κB blocking and interleukin (IL) neutralization experiments demonstrated that MSCs potentially secreted IL factors including I...