MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF OVINE BONE MARROW DERIVED MESENCHYMAL STEM CELLS

Prospective isolation and morphological study of adult ovine bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) was done at different passage levels. MSCs from adult ovine bone marrow was isolated by density gradient centrifugation method. Cells were enriched with DMEM-HG media throughout the study period. After 70-80% confluency, the cells were detached from the culture flask by using 0.25% trypsin/EDTA for 1-2 minutes at 37°C for further passaging upto passage4 (P4). It has been demonstrated that isolation of adult ovine BM-MSCs can be achieved by collecting marrow samples from the femur of adult sheep with a higher cell yield. BM-MSCs which reside in the bone marrow has plastic adherency, non-hematopietic cell population generating colony-forming unit-fibroblasts (CFU-F). Ovine BM-MSCs exhibited a heterogenous morphology with bipolar and polygonal cell bodies ranging from spindle shaped cells to triangular, elongated, spherical and dendritic shape in the primary culture. On subsequent passages (P1-P4) cultured cells changed to homogenous spindle shaped appearance. Among all types of adult stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) obtained from bone marrow (BM) was widely used in regenerative medicine. This was because of their high proliferative and differentiation potential. This study was aimed at sheep, as it is an ideal model for bone tissue engineering and has been proposed as an animal model for a wide range of applications in biomedical research like prion diseases, respiratory diseases, neurological disorders and cardiomyopathies.