Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Mol Biol Rep DOI 10.1007/s11033-016-4095-7 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Comparative capability of menstrual blood versus bone marrow derived stem cells in neural diferentiation Fereshteh Azedi 1,2  · Somaieh Kazemnejad 1  · Amir Hassan Zarnani 3  · Masoud Soleimani 4  · Amir Shojaei 5  · Shaghayegh Arasteh 1   Received: 5 September 2015 / Accepted: 3 December 2016 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 recording. For the irst time, we demonstrated that Men- SCs are a unique cell population with diferentiation abil- ity into neural-like cells comparable to BMSCs. In addi- tion, we have introduced an approach to generate NSCs from MenSCs and BMSCs and their further diferentiation into neural-like cells in vitro. Our results hold a promise to future stem cell therapy of neurological disorders using NSCs derived from menstrual blood, an accessible source in every woman. Keywords Menstrual blood · Bone marrow · Diferentiation · Mesenchymal stem cell · Neuron Introduction People diagnosed with neurological disorders still sufer from lack of eicient therapeutic approaches. Cell therapy has been regarded as a potential strategy for treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. The limited accessibility of precursor cells in adult brain with the potential to diferen- tiate into neurons has led to the urge of introducing renew- able cell sources, facilitating large-scale therapy [1, 2]. Menstrual blood (MB) has been identiied as an easily accessible, unlimited, and recycled source for isolation and expansion of stem cells. Application of adult stem cells isolated from sources such as bone marrow and adipose tissue is restricted by limited availability, use of invasive sampling methods, and lower proliferation potential than embryonic stem cells [3, 4]. In contrast, menstrual blood- derived stem cells (MenSCs) ofer the advantage of unlim- ited retrieval in quantities relevant to clinical applications [5–9]. The entity of MenSCs is not manifest though there are some assumptions that there exists circulating bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells in MB, which contribute Abstract In order to characterize the potency of men- strual blood stem cells (MenSCs) for future cell therapy of neurological disorders instead of bone marrow stem cells (BMSCs) as a well-known and conventional source of adult stem cells, we examined the in vitro diferentiation poten- tial of these stem cells into neural-like cells. The diferen- tiation potential of MenSCs to neural cells in comparison with BMSCs was assessed under two step neural diferen- tiation including conversion to neurosphere-like cells and inal diferentiation. The expression levels of Nestin, Micro- tubule-associated protein 2, gamma-aminobutyric acid type B receptor subunit 1 and 2, and Tubulin, beta 3 class III mRNA and/or protein were up-regulated during develop- ment of MenSCs into neurosphere-like cells (NSCs) and neural-like cells. The up-regulation level of these markers in diferentiated neural-like cells from MenSCs was com- parable with diferentiated cells from BMSCs. Moreover, both diferentiated MenSCs and BMSCs expressed high levels of potassium, calcium and sodium channel genes developing functional channels with electrophysiological * Somaieh Kazemnejad s.kazemnejad@avicenna.ac.ir; kazemnejad_s@yahoo.com 1 Reproductive Biotechnology Research Centre, Avicenna Research Institute, ACECR, P.O. Box: 1177-19615 Tehran, Iran 2 Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of advanced technologies in Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 3 Department of Immunology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 4 Department of Hematology, Faculty of Medical Science, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran 5 Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran