BackgroundCell-based therapy is a treatment method in tendon injuries. Bone morphogenic protein 12 (BMP-12) possesses tenogenic activity and was proposed as a differentiating factor for stem cells directed to transplantation. However, BMPs belong to pleiotropic TGF-β superfamily and have diverse effect on cells. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine if BMP-12 induces tenogenic differentiation of human adipose stem cells (hASCs) and how it affects other features of this population.ResultsHuman ASCs from 6 healthy donors were treated or not with BMP-12 (50 or 100 ng/ml, 7 days) and tested for gene expression (COLL1, SCX, MKH, DCN, TNC, RUNX2), protein expression (COLL1, COLL3, MKH), proliferation, migration, secretory activity, immunomodulatory properties and susceptibility to oxidative stress. RT-PCR revealed up-regulation of SCX, MKH and RUNX2 genes in BMP-12 treated cells (2.05, 2.65 and 1.87 fold in comparison to control, respectively, p < 0.05) and Western Blot revealed significant increase of COLL1 and MHK expression after BMP-12 treatment. Addition of BMP-12 significantly enhanced secretion of VEGF, IL-6, MMP-1 and MPP-8 by hASCs while had no effect on TGF-β, IL-10, EGF and MMP-13. Moreover, BMP-12 presence in medium attenuated inhibitory effect of hASCs on allo-activated lymphocytes proliferation. At the same time BMP-12 displayed no influence on hASCs proliferation, migration and susceptibility to oxidative stress.ConclusionBMP-12 activates tenogenic pathway in hASCs but also affects secretory activity and impairs immunomodulatory potential of this population that can influence the clinical outcome after cell transplantation.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12860-017-0129-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.