Contribution of dermal-derived mesenchymal cells during liver repair in two different experimental models

Progressive liver disease is a major health issue for which no effective treatment is available, leading to cirrhosis and orthotopic liver transplantation. However, the lack of availability of donor organs and other adverse factors including rejection limit its extensive clinical application. Cell-based therapy using mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) may represent an attractive therapeutic option. Dermal-derived mesenchymal cells (DMCs) are attractive as one of the abundant sources from which to isolate mesenchymal cells for therapeutic applications and can be easily accessed with minimal harm to the donor. In this study, we used two different animal models to investigate potential therapeutic effect of DMCs transplantation in liver injury. We found that DMCs administration alleviated liver fibrosis and restored the liver function in fibrotic mice induced by CCl(4). Furthermore, in an acute irradiation induced damage model, a unique population of DMCs could engraft into the liver tissue for a long period, exhibiting the phenotype of both mesenchymal cells and macrophage cells, and improve the survival of mice exposed to 8 Gy lethally total-body irradiation. These discoveries provide important evidence that DMCs therapy has a beneficial effect on liver injury, and provide new insight into liver injury therapy depending on the alternative cells.