Different media and supplements modulate the clonogenic and expansion properties of rabbit bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells

Background -: Rabbits provide an excellent model for many animal and human diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, for the development of new vaccines in wound healing management and in the field of tissue engineering of tendon, cartilage, bone and skin. The study presented herein aims to investigate the biological properties of bone marrow rabbit MSCs cultured in different conditions, in order to provide a basis for their clinical applications in veterinary medicine. Findings -: MSCs were isolated from 5 New Zealand rabbits. Fold increase, CFU number, doubling time, differentiation ability and immunophenotype were analyzed. With the plating density of 10 cells/cm 2 the fold increase was significantly lower with DMEM-20%FCS and MSCs growth was significantly higher with αMEM-hEGF. The highest clonogenic ability was found at 100 cell/cm2 with MSCBM and at 10 cell/cm 2 with M199. Both at 10 and 100 cells/cm2, in αMEM medium, the highest CFU increase was obtained by adding bFGF. Supplementing culture media with 10%FCS-10%HS determined a significant increase of CFU. Conclusion -: Our data suggest that different progenitor cells with differential sensitivity to media, sera and growth factors exist and the choice of culture conditions has to be carefully considered for MSC management. © 2008 Lapi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.