The protective effect of gingival mesenchymal stem cells on radiation-induced skin damage and its mechanism

Abstract Abstract Nuclear pollution is one of the main environment pollution. And Almost all of the waste of the nuclear accident will cause human skin radiation damage because of the special physiological location and the characterics of the skin cells. Different from other skin injuries, cutaneous radiation injury (CRI) is caused by the loss of a large number of stem cells which is very sensitive to radiation. Gingiva mesenchymal stem cells (GMSCs) have the characteristics of self-renewal, pluripotent differentiation, and immune regulatory cells both in vitro and in vivo and are easy to obtain without carcinogenicity than other stem cells. To prolong the residence time of the stem cells at the site of injury, Nap-GDFDFpDY (pY-Gel) self-assembling peptide hydrogels have been used in this study. Results revealed GMSCs can obviously alleviate skin injury induced from high-dose IR in mice and promote skin healing. And in cellular experiments, GMSCs conditioned medium (CM) can promote the proliferation and migration of skin cells, enhance the ability of DNA damage repair and reduce the inflammatory response. In addition, The findings of this study suggest that the mechanism may involve the activation of the EGFR/STAT3 signaling pathway in skin cells to promote the repair of skin cells after exposure to radiation.