期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2003
卷号：100
期号：5
页码：2397-2402
DOI：10.1073/pnas.0437997100
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：To investigate stem cell differentiation in response to tissue injury, human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) were cocultured with heat-shocked small airway epithelial cells. A subset of the hMSCs rapidly differentiated into epithelium-like cells, and they restored the epithelial monolayer. Immunocytochemistry and microarray analyses demonstrated that the cells expressed many genes characteristic of normal small airway epithelial cells. Some hMSCs differentiated directly after incorporation into the epithelial monolayer but other hMSCs fused with epithelial cells. Surprisingly, cell fusion was a frequent rather than rare event, in that up to 1% of the hMSCs added to the coculture system were recovered as binucleated cells expressing an epithelial surface epitope. Some of the fused cells also underwent nuclear fusion.
