Comparison in transcriptome and cytokine profiles of mesenchymal stem cells from human umbilical cord and cord blood

Human umbilical cord (UC) and cord blood (CB) provide attractive sources of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for cell therapy. Both UCMSCs and CBMSCs have been demonstrated to play prominent roles in clinical therapy. However, little is known about their functional differences in clinical application. Our transcriptome analysis uncovered high activity of insulin secretion related signaling pathways for CBMSCs and cell adhesion related signaling pathways for UCMSCs. Expression of a large number of immune related signaling pathways also showed the difference in both cells, implying their distinct immune modulatory functions. As the therapeutic effects of MSCs mainly dependent on the cytokines and growth factors produced by transplanted MSCs, we further compared the cytokine profiles of UCMSCs and CBMSCs using antibody array. By evaluating the expression of 106 cytokines, we found both MSCs abundantly secreted TSP-1, TSG-14, TIMP-1, IL-8, IL-6, CXCL1, GIF and IGFBP3. However, the expression of CCL2 in UCMSCs showed significantly higher than CBMSCs. IGFBP1 and IGFBP2 were secreted by CBMSCs with higher abundance than UCMSCs. Overall, these results suggest that UCMSCs and CBMSCs preserve different functional potentials, which have to be carefully considered before clinical treatment.