Single-cell RNA sequencing of mesenchymal stromal cells from primary donor-matched tissue sources reveals functional heterogeneity in immune activity and cell motility

The efficacy of mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) therapy is thought to depend on the intrinsic heterogeneity of MSC cultures isolated from different tissue sources as well as individual MSCs isolated from the same tissue source, neither of which is well understood. The horse model, in contrast to human and mouse, allows for simultaneous sample collection from multiple tissues of the same animal, which circumvents the inter-donor variation in MSC cultures observed in other models. In the present study, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) on primary equine MSCs that were collected from three donor-matched tissue sources; adipose tissue (AT), bone marrow (BM), and peripheral blood (PB). We observed both inter- and intra-source heterogeneity across the three sources of equine MSCs. Mesenchymal stem cells were derived from 3 donor-matched tissues; adipose tissue, bone marrow, and peripheral blood and subjected to single cell RNA sequencing