The objective of this work was to study the response of adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) to exogenous biochemical stimulation, and the potential of ASCs to differentiate toward the smooth muscle cell (SMC) lineage. Immunofluorescence staining and Western blot analysis detected protein expression of the early SMC marker α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) in both control and experiment groups. Expression of α-SMA in ASCs significantly increased when treated with transforming growth factor-β1, while α-SMA expression only slightly increased in the presence of retinoic acid (RA), β-mercaptoethanol and ascorbic acid. Treatment with platelet-derived growth factor-BB, RA and dibutyryl-cyclic adenosine monophosphate decreased the expression of α-SMA significantly. While β-mercaptoethanol and ascorbic acid, as well as RA have resulted in increased α-SMA expression in marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells and other progenitor cells, our results demonstrate that these treatments do not significantly increase α-SMA expression, indicating that the differentiation potential of ASCs and mesenchymal stem cells may be fundamentally different.

Keywords:
Adipose-derived stem cells, Smooth muscle cells, α-Smooth muscle actin
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© 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel
2006
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