Abstract
Cardiac insufficiency of wide etiology is one of the leading causes of mortality of the human kind. In parallel with conventional therapies new therapeutic options are sought, such as cell therapy using mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), where the effect on heart tissue regeneration is examined.
In this work we investigated for 10 days the effect of MSC on cardiomyocytes (CMC) of adult pigs (n = 5) in in vitro culture. CMC were cultured on four different surfaces (normal cultivation plastic without coating, normal cultivation plastic coated with laminin, normal cultivation plastic coated with gelatin and special cultivation plastic modified to enhance cell adhesion) to optimize the culture and increase percentage of living CMC in cell culture.
Simultaneously, CMC were co-cultured with MSC in both direct and also indirect (with use of transwells) contact. The results show that the normal cultivation plastic coated with gelatin or laminin contributed to the adhesion of cells significantly more (p < 0.001) than the cultivation on normal cultivation plastic without the cover.
Together with the live CMC adhered also other cells, dead or dying, so simple cultivation is not sufficient to purify the cell culture from dead and dying cells. Co-cultivation with MSC showed a positive effect on the CMC in in vitro culture, the positive trend was visible in the first day of cultivation, but in the third day the difference was statistically significant (p = 0.0152).
MSC support longer survival of CMC in in vitro culture. The obtained results will serve as a basis for further studies.