Lipid Stimulation of Mesenchymal Differentiation

Seoul South Korea -

Jeon et al published today in the online version of the Journal of Cell Sciences that exposure of mesenchymal stem cells to the lipid sphingosylphosphorylcholine (SPC) induces differentiation into smooth muscle cells in a paper entitled
"Sphingosylphosphorylcholine induces differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells into smooth-muscle-like cells through a TGF-{beta}-dependent mechanism."

SPC is a metabolite of sphingolipids and was known to induce differentation of various cells including leukemic stem cells. In the context of healthy stem cell differentation, this paper raises the possibility that therapeutic modulation of cytokine signalling may be possible through administration of various small molecules that act at the level of lipid signalling.

Such interventions have been demonstrated clinically effective in other biological systems, for example in the field of immunology where administration of the drug FTY720 was demonstrated to be an effective immune suppressant through antagonizing the receptor for the lipid metabolite sphingosine-1-phosphate.