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The ability of mesenchymal stromal (stem) cells (MSCs) to be mobilised from their local depot towards sites of injury and to participate in tissue repair makes these cells promising candidates for cell therapy. Physiological O2 tension in an MSC niche in vivo is about 4–7%. However, most in vitro studies of MSC functional activity are performed at 20% O2. Therefore, this study focused on the effects of short-term hypoxic stress (0.1% O2, 24 h) on adipose tissue-derived MSC motility at tissue-related O2 level. No significant changes in integrin expression were detected after short-term hypoxic stress. However, O2 deprivation provoked vimentin disassembly and actin polymerisation and increased cell stiffness. In addition, hypoxic stress induced the downregulation of ACTR3, DSTN, MACF1, MID1, MYPT1, NCK1, ROCK1, TIAM1, and WASF1 expression, the products of which are known to be involved in leading edge formation and cell translocation. These changes were accompanied by the attenuation of targeted and nontargeted migration of MSCs after short-term hypoxic exposure, as demonstrated in scratch and transwell migration assays. These results indicate that acute hypoxic stress can modulate MSC function in their native milieu, preventing their mobilisation from sites of injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optimisation of haematopoietic stem and progenitor cell expansion is on demand in modern cell therapy. In this work, haematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) have been selected from unmanipulated cord blood mononuclear cells (cbMNCs) due to adhesion to human adipose-tissue derived stromal cells (ASCs) under standard (20%) and tissue-related (5%) oxygen. ASCs efficiently maintained viability and supported further HSPC expansion at 20% and 5% O2. During co-culture with ASCs, a new floating population of differently committed HSPCs (HSPCs-1) grew. This suspension was enriched with СD34+cells up to 6 (20% O2) and 8 (5% O2) times. Functional analysis of HSPCs-1 revealed cobble-stone area forming cells (CAFCs) and lineage-restricted colony-forming cells (CFCs). The number of CFCs was 1.6 times higher at tissue-related O2, than in standard cultivation (20% O2). This increase was related to a rise in the number of multipotent precursors - BFU-E, CFU-GEMM and CFU-GM. These changes were at least partly ensured by the increased concentration of MCP-1 and IL-8 at 5% O2. In summary, our data demonstrated that human ASCs enables the selection of functionally active HSPCs from unfractionated cbMNCs, the further expansion of which without exogenous cytokines provides enrichment with CD34+cells. ASCs efficiently support the viability and proliferation of cord blood haematopoietic progenitors of different commitment at standard and tissue-related O2 levels at the expense of direct and paracrine cell-to-cell interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]