Biological Effects of Maslinic Acid on Human Epithelial Cells Used in Tissue Engineering

Abstract

In the present work, we evaluated the potential of maslinic acid (MA) to improve currently available keratinocyte culture methods for use in skin tissue engineering. Results showed that MA can increase cell proliferation and WST-1 activity of human keratinocytes after 24, 48, and 72 h, especially at the concentration of 5 μg/ml, without affecting cell viability. This effect was associated to a significant increase of KI-67 protein expression and upregulation of several genes associated to cell proliferation (PCNA) and differentiation (cytokeratins, intercellular junctions and basement membrane related genes). When human keratinocytes were isolated from skin biopsies, we found that MA at the concentration of 5 μg/ml significantly increased the efficiency of the explant and the cell dissociation methods. These results revealed the positive effects of MA to optimize human keratinocyte culture protocols for use in skin tissue engineering.

A novel 3D biofabrication strategy to improve cell proliferation and differentiation of human Wharton’s jelly mesenchymal stromal cells for cell therapy and tissue engineering

“…The potential usefulness of this 3D culture system should be determined for other types of MSC and other types of human cells that typically proliferate very low in culture, such as the epithelial corneal cells ( Chato-Astrain et al, 2021 ), skin and oral mucosa keratinocytes ( Ortiz-Arrabal et al, 2022 ) and urethral epithelial cells, among others. The potential applications of FIBRIAGAR-3D include not only improving current cell culture methods, but also, generating novel bioartificial tissues by tissue engineering for the clinical treatment of diseases affecting the human cornea ( Pellegrini et al, 2018 ), skin ( Egea-Guerrero et al, 2019 ), oral mucosa ( Blanco-Elices et al, 2021 ) and urethra ( Casarin et al, 2022 ).…”

“…The recent development of advanced therapy medicinal products allowed the generation of novel therapeutic products based on human cells ( Olry de Labry-Lima et al, 2023 ). In general, cell therapy and tissue engineering use living cells that are initially obtained from tissue biopsies and subsequently expanded to obtain sufficient numbers of cells ( Ortiz-Arrabal et al, 2022 ). Although cell culture methods have been improved during the last years, most methods are still subjected to important limitations regarding their efficiency, the time required to obtain abundant cell populations and the phenotypic changes that most primary cell cultures experience after ex vivo sequential passaging ( Yan et al, 2014 ).…”