Inflammatory cytokines pre-treatment enhances the immunomodulatory property of hUC-MSCs

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) exist in almost all tissues and participate in tissue regeneration and homeostasis. MSCs based therapy is applied to some refractory immune diseases to control inflammation, such as lupus nephritis, Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis. However, accumulating studies showed that the immunomodulatory capacity of naïve MSCs is mild and limited. To enhance MSCs immunomodulatory function, researchers innovated a new method to reprogram MSCs via pre-treatment with inflammatory cytokines. In this work, we firstly used a cocktail of three cytokines, IL-1β, TNF-a and IFN-γ, to treat hUC-MSCs (human MSCs from umbilical cord). We then performed gene expression profiling analysis using data obtained from RNA-seq of 3 untreated hUC-MSCs (ctrl) and 3 cytokines-treated hUC-MSCs (primed). Comparative gene expression profiling analysis of RNA-seq data for 3 untreated hUC-MSCs (ctrl) and 3 inflammatory cytokines treated hUC-MSCs (primed).