The Benefit of Platelet-rich Plasma as Enhancer for Mesenchymal Stem Cell Growth and Differentiation into Endothelial-like Cell

Along with the vast development in regenerative medicine, the application of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in various pathology condition have been intensively studied. MSCs have been shown their superiority, including proliferation, differentiation into multi-lineage cells, and immune privilege. MSCs also showed their ability to differentiate into the endothelial lineage, which is crucial for maintaining the health of blood vessels. However, most studies that revealed the superiority of MSCs were done using fetal bovine serum (FBS) as the growth factor. Although there are some commercials for FBS-free culture medium, the price is less affordable. Therefore, to date, the quest for alternative growth factors to FBS in endothelial differentiation remains crucial. One of the important candidates is the blood-derived growth factor, namely platelet-rich plasma (PRP). Our study aimed to elucidate the role of PRP in the cell number and differentiation capacity of umbilical cord tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (UC-MSCs) under an endothelial differentiation medium. Application of PRP10% has shown to have a higher cell number than FBS 5% significantly, while PRP 5% is almost similar to FBS 5%. Moreover, PRP 10% is also beneficial to promote UC-MSCs differentiation into the endothelial-like cell as shown as the higher expression of the endothelial marker including VEGF (2.68 folds) and VE-cadherin (4.55 folds) (p < 0.05) compared to FBS 5%. Our study indicates the benefit of PRP as an important alternative to FBS in developing an animal-free endothelial differentiation culture system.