Effects of Adipose-Derived Stem Cells on the Survival of Allogenic Skin Graft in Mice：A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Composite tissue allotransplantation (CTA) had considerable potential for application in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery, such as traumatic injuries, and extensive tissue loss secondary to burns. CTA is composed of a variety of tissues, such as skin, fat, muscle, nerves, lymph nodes, bone, cartilage, ligaments, and bone marrow. In these tissues, skin is one of the most common tissues in transplantations. However, due to high immunogenicity of skin, subcutaneous effusion, skin fixation and other factors, they may cause graft acceptance and tolerance more difficult to achieve [1, 2]. Finally, these reasons may inevitably lead to failed graft operation, and it will bring the patients great suffering and heavy financial burden. Therefore, improving survival of CTA has important clinical significance.

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), derived from fetal and adult organs, have the capacity to self-renew and differentiate into various tissues including muscle, fat, stroma, tendon, cartilage, and bone [3]. The previous experiments in vitro have revealed that Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can suppress the T cell response and directly inhibit T cell and B cells proliferation [4-6]. Furthermore, MSCs can affect immunologic functions of antigen-presenting cells and inhibit monocyte differentiation into mature dendritic cells [7].

Moreover, as one type of the mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), Adipose-Derived Stem Cells (ADSCs) from the adipose tissue, have been proved that they also have the capacity as the MSC [8]. Some experiments in vivo have showed that ADSCs have the potentials of immunosuppressive properties, anti-inflammatory [8-10]. In some recent researches, they showed that the ADSCs can also promote vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) synthesis, thus, ADSCs could participate the process of neovascularization [11].

Based on these characteristics of the Adipose-Derived Stem Cells (ADSCs), at first step, we were to make primary research to study the effect of adipose derived stem cells on improving the allogenic skin graft survival in allogenic mouse model, and we also studied the effect of different injection ways on the allogenic skin graft survival in mouse model.