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Published on: January 23, 2018
Investigating curcumin potential for diabetes cell therapy, in vitro and in vivo study
Mohammad Amin Javidi1, Ayat Kaeidi2, Seyedeh Sahar Mortazavi Farsani1
1Department of Molecular Genetics, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
Aims:
An important obstacle on the way of cell-based therapy is the risk of tumorigenicity in the patients benefit from these transplanted cells due to undifferentiated cells which participate in transplantation. Curcumin, the main compound of spice turmeric -as one of the natural products-was demonstrated to possess effective anti-cancer properties, with no significant effect on normal cells in dose and/or time-dependent manner. Furthermore many studies have been accomplished using curcumin for diabetes treatment. Therefore in this study we examined the efficacy of IPCs treated with curcumin in vivo.
Main Methods:
Differentiation efficiency investigated by flowcytometry. RNA extraction and real-time PCR performed for important genes in IPC differentiation and tumorigenesis including Insulin, Nestin, Ngn3, Pdx1, P21, and P53. Finally we investigated the efficiency of these differentiated and treated cells in diabetic rats.
Key Findings:
Our data indicates that nanocurcumin -in a specific dose-reduces the expression of Nestin with no significant effect on insulin expression in mRNA and protein level. Besides blood glucose level of diabetic rats which treated with DNC + cells, decreased from average 350 (mg/dI) to 100 (mg/dI). Checking out the pancreases of these rats, demonstrated that their endocrine segment was rebuilt. Moreover hematoxylin & eosin staining and IF results revealed that the Langerhans Islands were reformed.
Significance:
IPCs' which treated with DNC were able to efficiently control the blood glucose level in diabetic rats which these cells were transplanted to them. Hence Curcumin has the potential to be employed in this kind of cell therapy.
