Stable cell adhesion affects mesenchymal stem cell sheet fabrication: Effects of fetal bovine serum and human...

Cell sheet technology exploits temperature responsive cell culture dishes (TRCDs) as versatile cell harvesting methods to yield contiguous cell monolayers robustly held together by cell-cell junctions, receptors, and endogenous extracellular matrix. More than 15 years of clinical data using autologous-sourced cell sheets demonstrate enhanced therapeutic properties through increased cell retention at target tissue sites. Recently, several preclinical studies have also been reported using mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) sheets in wound healing, cardiac ischemia therapies, and pancreatic regeneration. However, optimized MSC sheet fabrication conditions have not yet been reported. In this study, we identified specific conditions for reliable human MSC sheet fabrication by comparing cell growth media supplements (fetal bovine serum [FBS] and human platelet lysate [hPL]). Human umbilical cord-derived MSCs cultured in FBS and hPL exhibit different actin cytoskeletal structures related to their cell morphologies and adhesion. MSCs cultured in FBS media showed stable cell adhesion on TRCDs with flattened cell shapes and aligned actin cytoskeletal structure. This stable cell adhesion enables production of consistent MSC cell sheets, with controlled cell sheet detachment. Conversely, cell sheet fabrication in hPL media exhibits poor reproducibility being more sensitive to temperature- and culture time-induced release due to weak cell adhesion. These findings suggest that stable MSC adhesion to TRCDs is important to reliable MSC sheet fabrication methods and that MSC growth media supplementation directly affects cell adhesion during culture.