Comparative transcriptomic analysis of human mesenchymal stem cells derived from dental pulp and adipose tissues

Abstract

Objective: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been isolated from various human tissues. Although they share cardinal stem cell features of self-renewal and multi-potency, they also seem to possess distinct characteristics depending on the tissue types they originated from. When developing stem cell-based therapies, MSCs with the most desirable characteristics should be chosen. However, our knowledge on tissue typespecific characteristics of MSCs is limited. Here, we comparatively studied the gene expression profiles of MSCs from different tissue types, and predicted target diseases suitable for each type of MSCs. Methods: We harvested MSCs from human dental pulp and adipose tissue specimens and subjected them to gene expression microarray analysis. Characteristic gene expression signatures of the MSCs from each tissue type were identified using gene-annotation enrichment analysis.