• Fereshteh Javanmard, Morteza Koruji, Fatemeh Moradi, Mohammad Reza Kochakian, Seyed A Moosavi, and Hamid Reza Asgari.
• Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Research Center, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
• Arch Iran Med. 2021 Jul 1; 24 (7): 548-555.

BackgroundHuman umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUMSCs) have been considered to repair damaged tissues and cells. This study aims to investigate the differentiation efficiency affected by Schwann cells (SCs) and laminin and also compare them to other strategies using chemicals or growth factors.MethodsSCs and hUMSCs were separated from dorsal root ganglion of rats and newborn human umbilical cords (hUCs), respectively, and then cultured. The marker expressions of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), hematopoietic and endothelial for hUMSCs were confirmed by flow cytometry. The hUMSCs were cultured in four groups: 1) control, 2) co-culture with SCs (C), 3) laminin (L), and 4) co-culture with SCs treated by laminin (CL). The expression of protein and gene-related differentiation NSE, MAP2 and β-tubulin were examined by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and immunocytochemistry after 12 days.ResultsThe flow cytometry analysis revealed high expression of mesenchymal and low expression of hematopoietic and endothelial markers, where the SCs expressed S100 at a high level (97.4%±2.25). The expression of NSE, MAP2 and β-tubulin increased significantly in the C, L and CL groups compared to the control group (P<0.001), where the CL group had the highest expression among the groups [7.59±0.126, 7.87±0.191, 6.36±0.420, respectively, (P<0.01)]. Also, the expression of neural proteins was significantly increased in tested groups in comparison to the control group.ConclusionCombined laminin and SCs co-culturing with hUMCSs could be the most effective strategy for neural differentiation.© 2021 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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