NOTE Gingival and dermal fibroblasts: Their similarities and differences revealed from gene expression Katsumi Ebisawa, 1,2, † Ryuji Kato, 3,4, † Mai Okada, 3,4,5 Tomotaka Sugimura, 3 Mazlyzam Abdul Latif, 5,6 Yusuke Hori, 7 Yuji Narita, 3,5,8 Minoru Ueda, 1 Hiroyuki Honda, 4 and Hideaki Kagami 5,9, ⁎ Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, 65 Tsuruma-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan, 1 Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, 65 Tsuruma-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan, 2 Department of Clinical Cell Therapy, Nagoya University School of Medicine, 65 Tsuruma-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan, 3 Department of Biotechnology, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan, 4 Department of Tissue Engineering, Nagoya University School of Medicine, 65 Tsuruma-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan, 5 Department of Biomedical Science, Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz, 50300 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 6 Education Center for Integrative Medicine, Nihon Pharmaceutical University, 10281 Komuro, Ina-cho, Kitaadachi-gun, Saitama 362-0806, Japan, 7 Department of Cardiac Surgery, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, 65 Tsuruma-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan, 8 and Division of Molecular Therapy, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Shirokanedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8639, Japan 9 Received 3 June 2010; accepted 18 November 2010 Available online 1 February 2011 Gene expression profiles in normal human gingival and dermal fibroblasts were investigated using DNA microarrays. Their fundamental characteristics were almost identical, but 5% of their genes were uniquely expressed. These results help us to choose an optimal cell source for effective fibroblast-based cell therapy that is dependent on differential gene expression profiles. © 2010, The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. All rights reserved. [Key words: Fibroblast; Gingival tissue; Anti-aging; Microarray; Antioxidant] Fibroblasts are widely used for regenerative medicine in clinics, such as gingival (1) or facial skin treatment (2). In fact, fibroblasts are considered to be a mixture of various types of cells of “spindle shape” and as such there are no clearly defined biomarkers of fibroblasts. Gingival and dermal fibroblasts are similar in their morphology and function. However, it is considered that cultured cells retain the original characteristics of the tissue of origin and therefore may induce differential therapeutic effects. For example, gingival wounds are known to heal relatively quickly with less scar formation compared with skin wounds, which may imply that gingival fibroblasts have a higher capability for regeneration in cell-based therapies (3). The reason for this phenomenon may be partly due to characteristic differences between gingival and dermal fibroblasts including the expression of migration stimulating factor (4) and matrix formation (5) but these differences remain largely unknown. Recently, the characteristics of dermal fibroblasts have been reported to be different depending on the skin source, such as face, trunk and palmoplantar skin (6). Although the expression of fibronectin and its alternative splice variants are known to be different between trunk and oral mucosal fibroblasts, there is still no detailed report on the functional differences between gingival and dermal fibroblasts (7). In this study, we investigated differential gene expression in normal gingival and dermal fibroblasts using DNA microarray to investigate the difference between the vague fibroblast-type cells from different tissue origin to achieve higher therapeutic effect in cell therapy. This study conformed to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. Dermal and oral tissues were obtained from healthy volunteers (8 cases of facial skin from the postauricular crease: 5 females, 3 males, average age 48, and 8 cases of oral mucosa from the posterior vestibule: 6 females, 2 males, average age 43) whose informed consent was obtained according to a protocol approved by the ethics committee of Nagoya University Hospital. After enzymatic digestion, dermal and mucosal fibroblasts were cultured in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) containing 10% fetal bovine serum at 37°C in the presence of 5% CO 2 for about 4 weeks as reported previously (8). Total mRNAs were extracted from cells between passages 4–5 by Trizol reagent (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) and were applied to Human Focus Arrays (Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA, USA) for microarray analysis according to the manufacturer's protocol (http://www. affymetrix.com/support/technical/manuals.affx). The gene expression data were analyzed by Arrayassist (Stratagene, La Jolla, CA, USA). Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering VOL. 111 No. 3, 255 – 258, 2011 www.elsevier.com/locate/jbiosc ⁎ Corresponding author. Division of Molecular Therapy, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Shirokanedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8639, Japan. Tel.: +81 3 5449 5120; fax: +81 3 5449 5121. E-mail address: kagami@ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp (H. Kagami). † K. E. and R. K. contributed equally to this project. 1389-1723/$ - see front matter © 2010, The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jbiosc.2010.11.014