Many mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) based therapies have the common issue ofcells becoming trapped in the lung vasculature. Our novel enucleated cell therapy,
named “Cargocytes,” also encounter this issue, though to a lesser degree due to their
smaller size. Lung trapping can be especially dangerous in a therapeutic because it can
cause embolisms in the lung vasculature. We therefore designed and optimized a series
of protocols to further reduce the cell size of these Cargocytes and obtain minimal lung
trapping after intravenous injection. By using a spinner flask for 3D culture, we show
that the size of the MSCs and Cargocytes can be significantly reduced after 48 hours of
culturing, as compared to cells cultured in a 2D environment. After optimizing the
spinner flask culture, we then proceeded to optimize the enucleation process for 3D
cells such that we could get a sufficient yield at an acceptable efficiency. We next
compared the cell surface markers of 2D MSCs and 3D MSCs. Markers for MSCs
remained constant even after culturing in 3D for 48 hours.
Because Cargocytes are a novel platform technology, some diagnostic assays
have yet to be conducted on these new cell carriers. We conducted a series of tests to
look at markers of apoptosis, such as an Annexin V and multi-caspase assay. We found
the profiles to be comparable to that of the parental MSCs. Finally, we engineered
hTERT-MSCs with exogenous CDK4 to potentially allow cells to grow under 3D culture
conditions. Although the CDK4 engineering did not promote growth of MSCs in 3D
conditions, the cells were able to survive much longer. A cell cycle analysis also
revealed that these newly engineered cells have slightly more cells in the G2 phase
compared to parental hTERT-MSCs.