心脏干细胞对心肌细胞凋亡的保护机制

Protective mechanism of cardiac stem cells against myocardial apoptosis

BACKGROUND:Myocardial apoptosis can lead to many kinds of heart diseases, but most of the conventional treatments cannot get desired effects. The emergence of cardiac stem cell related theory that subverts the previous view of myocardial cells provides a new idea for the treatment of a variety of heart diseases. OBJECTIVE:To investigate the protective mechanism of cardiac stem cells in myocardial apoptosis. METHODS:Cardiac stem cells were isolated from five neonatal rats. Another 20 Wistar rats were selected to make myocardial infarction models, and then model rats were equivalently randomized into observation and control groups. One day after modeling, rats in each group were given injection of cardiac stem cells or culture solution. Fourteen days after injection, myocardial apoptosis index was calculated and expression of apoptosis-related proteins was detected in both groups. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:After continuous 3 days of culture, a completely spread growth in the cardiac tissues was visible, and a small amount of cells similar to fibrocytes climbed out from the cardiac tissue sample. These cells isolated using magnetic bead method were sub-cultured for 5 days, and found to be regrouped again. Compared with the control group, the apoptotic index, Fas and Fasl expression were significantly lower (P < 0.05), and Bcl-2 expression was significantly higher in the observation group (P < 0.05). All these findings show that cardiac stem cell transplantation can effectively regulate the expression of apoptosis-related proteins and inhibit the apoptosis of myocardial cells in rats with myocardial infarction.