Comparative evaluation of mesenchymal stromal cells from umbilical cord and amniotic membrane in xeno-free conditions

BACKGROUND: Within the past years, umbilical cord (UC) and amniotic membrane (AM) expanded in human platelet lysate (PL) have been found to become increasingly candidate of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) in preclinical and clinical studies. Different sources of MSCs have different properties, and lead to different therapeutic applications. However, the similarity and differences between the AMMSCs and UCMSCs in PL remain unclear. RESULTS: In this study, we conduct a direct head-to-head comparison with regard to biological characteristics (morphology, immunophenotype, self-renewal capacity, and trilineage differentiation potential) and immunosuppression effects of AMMSCs and UCMSCs expanded in PL. Our results indicated that AMMSCs showed similar morphology, immunophenotype, proliferative capacity and colony efficiency with UCMSCs. Moreover, no significantly differences in osteogenic, chondrogenic and adipogenic differentiation potential were observed between the two types of cells. However, AMMSCs exhibited higher PGE(2) expression and IDO activity compared with UCMSCs when primed by IFN-γ and (or) TNF-α induction, and AMMSCs showed a higher inhibitory effect on PBMCs proliferation than UCMSCs. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that AMMSCs expanded in PL showed similar morphology, immunophenotype, self-renewal capacity, and trilineage differentiation potential with UCMSCs. However, AMMSCs possessed superior immunosuppression effects in comparison with UCMSCs. These results suggest that AMMSCs in PL might be more suitable than UCMSCs for treatment of immune diseases. This work provides a novel insight into choosing the appropriate source of MSCs for treatment of immune diseases. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12860-018-0178-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.