Mesenchymal stromal cells perturb human monocyte in vitro differentiation into dendritic cells

Monocytes cultured in media containing GM-CSF and IL4 for 5 days normally differentiate into immature dendritic cells which, upon further stimulation with LPS for an additional 2 days, acquire a mature phenotype. In the present study, we evaluated the effect of human cord-blood mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) on human monocyte differentiation into immature and mature DCs by examining the trancriptional profile of the cells that were obtained after both the differentiation and maturation stages. This is a six condition experiment (iDC, iDC-MSC, mDC, mDC-MSCd, mDC-MSCm, mDC-MSCdm) where each condition is in biological triplicates, that is 3 donors (A, B, C) per condition. iDC are cells obtained after 5-day differentiation of monocytes, otherwise known as immature DCs. iDC-MSC are the cells obtained at the end of the 5-day differentiation phase of monocytes, during which MSC were also present. mDC are cells obtained after a 2-day maturation of iDC with LPS, also known as mature DCs. mDC-MSC are cells obtained after MSC have been present during only the differentiation (mDC-MSCd) phase, only the maturation (mDC-MSCm) phase or during both the differentiation and maturation phases (mDC-MSCdm).