Stressed Mesenchymals Make More IGF-1

New Orleans, Louisiana -

We at StemCellPatents.com have been stating for a while now that one of the future areas of our field will be not simply determining if stem cell therapies work, but how to optimize them.  For example, bone marrow derived MSC are already in Phase III clinical trials, and numerous other cell based therapies are working their way through the pipeline.  But how to make the cells work better?

A patent previously covered by us described how serum starvation may help in endowing pluripotency on mesenchymal stem cells.  Another patent covered the use of serum starvation to increase cloning efficiency. 

In a recent paper (Sanchez et al. Epigenetic Reprogramming of IGF-1 and Leptin Genes by Serum Deprivation in Multipotential Mesenchymal Stromal Cells. Stem Cells 2008 Nov 26) temporary serum starvation was shown to induce a potent (200 fold) increase in production of IGF-1, which is an antiapoptotic factor in mesenchymal stem cells.  This may be a neat way to "supercharge" MSC.  Previously it was demonstrated that MSC angiogenic/cardioprotective efficacy could be markedly upregulated by transfection with IGF-1.  Maybe serum starvation could achieve a similar result.

The publication also demonstrated that leptin increases after serum starvation.  Leptin inhibits body fat and can act as a Th1 cytokine.

Most interestingly, the authors demonstrated epigenetic changes occured that were associated with serum starvation.  Maybe the patent demonstrating serum starvation increasing pluripotency was onto something !!