070 MicroRNAs As Biomarkers of Stem Cell Damage Affecting Autologous Stem Cell Therapy for Erectile Dysfunction and Other Conditions

Potential stem cell damage by a disease-induced milieu, and its risks of impaired stem cell therapy, have not virtually been explored so far in either research or therapy. However, it was recently reported that muscle derived stem cells (MDSC) isolated at a late stage diabetes (LD-MDSC) from aged Zucker obese (ZO) rats after their endogenous long-term exposure to untreated type 2 diabetes (T2D) and obesity/dyslipidemia, are severely impaired in their tissue repair ability when implanted into the penile corpora cavernosa of these aged rats, failing to correct the associated penile corporal veno-occlusive dysfunction (CVOD). Moreover, the LD-MDSC were imprinted with a noxious gene global transcriptional phenotype (gene-GTS). This contrasted with the implanted MDSC from young early T2D OZ rats (ED-MDSC). Another study showed that short-term incubation of ED-MDSC with palmitic acid (PA) or cholesterol (CHOL), as representative lipid factors, or with the aged OZ rat dyslipidemic serum, partially replicated the in vivo gene-GTS, caused MDSC fat infiltration, and specifically OZ serum led to overexpression of myostatin, a muscle mass inhibitor/pro-lipofibrotic protein.