Long-term infuence of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells on liver ischemia-reperfusion injury in a rat model

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the long-term usefulness of intraportal injection of the bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) in limitation of experimentally induced ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) in a rat model. Material/Methods: Twenty Wistar rats were divided into 3 groups: donor group (n=5), study group (n=10), and control group (n=5). IRI was performed using a modifed hanging-weight system after left portal triad occlusion in study group animals. Isolated autologous BM-MSCs were labeled with fuorochrome PKH-26 then intraportally injected into the rats in the study group. Control group animals were intraportally injected with 1 ml of PBS. Follow-up was 3 months, after which animals were sacrifced for histopathological examination. Migration of BM-MSCs into diferent organs was examined. Results: H&E staining of liver tissue sections from “time zero” biopsies did not show many irregularities in structural or histological construction compared to liver sections from the control group. However, a small amount of cen-trilobular hepatocyte necrosis and coagulative necrosis with neutrophil infltration areas was observed in liver sections of the study group. The migration assay of BM-MSCs labeled with PKH-26 showed the highest positive BM-MSCs staining (6%) in the spleen, while few positively stained cells were found (2%) in liver sections. No BM-MSCs were detected in brain, kidney, or lung tissues. Conclusions: These results suggest that intraportal bone marrow-de rived mesenchymal stem cell injection is safe and cells do not migrate chaotically to other organs after targeted implementation.