Expansion of human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells with enhanced immunomodulatory properties

Cell culture confluency affects gene expression profiles of human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). High-confluency MSCs are enriched in pathways that confer them a more immunosuppressive phenotype as compared to low-confluency MSCs. To investigate whether cell culture confluency affects the transcriptome of human bone marrow-derived MSCs, we expanded the cells by seeding at low and high density, and harvested these cells within a same time frame, leading to two conditions: low-confluency (LC) and high-confluency (HC). We then harvested total RNA from cells of these two conditions. Comparative gene expression profiling analysis of RNA-seq data for LC and HC was performed.