• Stimulatory effect of mesenchymal stem cells on caspase expression of acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line
  • Ezzatollah Fathi,1,*
    1. Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran


  • Introduction: Introduction: The effect of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) on the immortality features of malignant cells, such as hematologic cancerous cells, are controversial, and the associated mechanisms are yet to be well understood. The aim of the present study was to investigate the in vitro effect of adipose tissue derived-MSCs (ADSCs) on the acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cell line through apoptosis assessment.
  • Methods: Methods: In this experimental study, MSCs were isolated and characterized from adipose tissue. In the following, Mol-4 as ALL line was cultured till sub-confluent condition. Two cell populations were co-cultured on trans-well plates for 5 days. Next, Molt-4 cells were collected and subjected to Ki/caspase assay for apoptosis assessment.
  • Results: Results: Flow-cytometric analysis showed that ADSCs had high levels of expression of CD44 (94.5%) and CD90 (87.1%) and hematopoietic cell lineage-specific antigens, such as CD31 (0.07%), and CD56 (0.9%) were not expressed in these cells. The predominant effect of ADSCs on inhibition of cell proliferation was detected by Ki-67 expression. The downregulation of Ki-67 was seen in co-cultured cells in comparison to the control group. In addition, the percentage of Ki-67 in the control cells reached 9.1% was attributed to ADSCs (*p<0.05). Also, apoptosis of Molt-4 cells was evaluated following co-culture of these cells with ADSCs by caspase assessment. This part of the results showed that caspase level was increased by about 12.58%.
  • Conclusion: Conclusion: Taken together, the data showed that ADSCs cause to increase the caspase expression as critical agent in Molt-4 cell apoptosis. These findings could be effective in cell-based therapy.
  • Keywords: Key words: Adipose tissue derived-MSCs, Molt-4 cell line, ALL, co-culture, cell-based therapy