Extremely-low frequency magnetic field modulates differentiation and maturation of human and rat primary and multipotent stem cells

In the last 15 years, we reported numerous biological effects of extremely-low frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF-EMF) on different cells types. We showed morphological and cytoskeletal changes in keratinocyte cell lines exposed to a 50-Hz 2 mT ELF-EMF. Furthermore, we reported that very high magnetic field (MF) intensity promotes maturation and differentiation in newborn cerebellar granule cells, and a 50-Hz 2 mT ELF-EMF produced a sudden increase in the intracellular calcium level in rat anterior pituitaryderived AtT20 D16V cells followed by a reorganization of the cytoskeletal network via polymerization of actin and differentiation of protein expression. Recently, we showed that a combination of static and alternate EMFs, tuned to Ca2+ ion cyclotron energy resonance (Ca2+-ICR) was able to trigger human cardiac stem sell-specific differentiation. In the present review, we report a summary of the most relevant results that we have reached in the last 7 years, in particular, we focus the attention on the differentiation effect of ELF-EMF on 3 different types of primary cell culture: human oral keratinocytes (HOK), newborn rat cerebellar granule neurons (CGN), and human adult cardiac stem cells (CSC).