Isolation, culture and characterization of foetal tendon stem cells (FTSCs) in rabbit

摘要

This stud y aimed for isolation, culturing and characterization properties of foetal tendon stem cells (FTSCs) derived from rabbit foetal tendons. TSCs were isolated from patellar and Achilles tendons of foetal rabbits. These TSCs were examined for their stemness property. The morphological characteristics of the TSCs were chronologically studied. The cell marker expression of the cells was examined using histochemical and immunohistochemical analysis. In addition, morphology, colony formation and proliferation of TSCs were also compared. Histochemical analysis of cells was done with a polychromatic stain Giemsa which revealed the morphological characteristic of the fixed cells. Immuno histochemical analysis of TSCs was done for the detection of the stem cell markers octamer- binding transcription factor 4 (Oct-4) and stage-specific embryonic antigen-4 SSEA-4. The TSCs cultured from foetal tendons via patellar tendon and Achilles tendon expressed the stem cell markers Oct-4 and SSEA-4 and also exhibited the typical morphology of tendon stem cells. Both small and large colonies were seen on the culture plate and stained with Giemsa. Morphologically, TSCs possessed smaller cell bodies and larger nuclei. This study showed that TSCs exhibit distinct properties, including expressio n of cell markers (Oct-4 and SSEA-4), proliferative, differentiatio n potential and cell morphology in culture. The future application of these in vitro-cultured TSCs can be possibly done on the tendon tissue engineering for the repair of tendons using the cell application based therap y.