Abstract
In utero surgical intervention is used in the treatment of numerous congenital anomalies. The most common central nervous system defect, spina bifida with myelomenigocele (MMC), is one such target for in utero intervention. While prenatal surgery improves outcomes compared to postnatal surgery, patients may further benefit from in utero stem cell therapy. Various candidate stem cell types are currently under consideration. Here it is proposed that placental mesenchymal stem cells (pMSCs) obtained from chorionic villous sampling (CVS) may serve as a cell source for autologous in utero therapy for MMC and other congenital defects. The growth rate of early passage cells obtained from CVS-size tissue samples was assessed using two cell isolation methods, the expression of various surface and intracellular proteins were examined by flow cytometry and immunocytochemistry, multipotency using differentiation assays, and cytokine secretion using two unique profiling arrays. Preliminary results show that pre-term pMSCs can be grown quickly and efficiently from CVS-size tissue samples (20-60mg), express neural-related transcription factors, surface and intracellular proteins, are multipotent, and secrete numerous ang10gemc and immunomodulatory cytokines significant for tissue remodeling, repair and regeneration. These cells seem to possess a great potential for therapeutic use, but future in vivo testing is necessary to determine if these cells can improve outcomes of in utero surgery. Future research should focus on functional variations between the cell subsets identified here and on the capacity of these cells to generate functional Schwann cell-like cells that can promote neural regeneration and myelinate axons in animal models in vivo.