Curcumin has the Potential to Prevent Tumor Formation in Stem Cell Therapy of Diabetes Type I

The prevalence of diabetes for all age-groups worldwide was estimated to be 2.8% in 2000and would reach to 4.4% in 2030 based on WHO reports. The main reason for diabetes type Iis that pancreatic beta cells do not produce insulin sufficiently. Organ/islet transplantation anddaily insulin injection are conventional therapeutic/treatment methods which have beenutilized until now. The search for alternatives has started several years ago and methodsbased on stem cells (SCs) differentiation are an ongoing task. An important obstacle on theway of this kind of cell-based therapy is the risk of tumorigenecity in the patients benefit fromthese transplanted cells due to undifferentiated cells which participate in transplantation.Curcumin, the main compound of spice turmeric- as one of the natural products- isdemonstrated to possess effective anti-cancer properties, with no significant effect on normalcells. Therefore we based the main aim of this study on improving the efficiency ofdifferentiating human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) into insulin producing cells (IPCs)and eradicating undifferentiated cells by nanocurcumin. Curcumin bioavailability could beimproved by loading it into nanoparticle carriers (nanocurcumin).We treated differentiatedcells with the appropriate dose of nanocurcumin. SCs was cultured in DMEM-low/highglucose, with 10% FBS plus 100mg/ml streptomycin and 100U/ml penicillin (all from Gibco).PBS and trypsin-0.25% EDTA were also purchased from Gibco. Total RNA was isolated fromcells using TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen). DTZ and DMSO were provided from Merck. Otherreagents were from Sigma-Aldrich (USA). DTZ staining, real-time PCR, and ELISA datashowed that clusters which emerged after differentiation are able to produce/secrete insulin.Nestin is a stemness molecular marker which is expressed only byundifferentiated/progenitor stem cells. After treating with nanocurcumin, the expression of thisgene vanished among treated samples which showed by RT-PCR. Furthermore thistreatment didnt affect insulin production/secretion (showed by ELISA/real time PCR). Ourdata indicates that polymeric nanocurcumin -in specific dose †eradicated undifferentiatedcells with no significant effect on insulin expression level. And hence nanocurcumin can beintroduced as an efficient compound to be utilized in diabetes type I cell therapy.K

Keywords:

Tumorigenecity , Stem Cell , Regenerative Medicine , Nanocurcumin , Diabetes