Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Senescence via Mass Spectrometry Analysis
Regenerative medicine is the use of whole living cells, or other self-generating treatment, to treat disease. It is considered the next frontier of medicine with the potential to treat many diseases that currently are untreatable and with reduced side effects to many current treatments. One of the most promising regenerative therapies involves the use of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). MSCs are multipotent stem cells that have the ability to differentiate into many different cell types, from osteocytes to adipocytes.1 While MSCs have shown great promise, they are extremely difficult to cultivate to an effective treatment population due to their tendency to senesce. Our group, along with our collaborators, is interested in studying senescence of MSCs in different culture surfaces, tissue culture poly(styrene) (TCP) and arginylglyclaspartic acid hydrogel (RGD), by employing mass spectrometry to perform metabolomics on these cells. By performing time-based experiments, we can see what differences arise between the healthy young cells in passage 1, compared to the more senescent cells in passage 3. Lipid extractions are performed on cells, and the extract is loaded into the triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) source coupled with high resolution mass spectrometers. Multivariate analysis is used to help identify differences between the various experimental conditions and these differences can be explored further.
