Differences in mesenchymal stem cell cytokine profiles between MS patients and healthy donors: implication for assessment of disease activity and treatment.

MSCs have been proposed as possible treatment in MS: In this study MSCs obtained from 10 MS patients and 6 healthy donors (HD) were compared in terms of phenotypical and functional characteristics. We show that MSCs isolated from MS and HD differ significantly for IP10 production. Therefore, although MSCs isolated from MS patients exhibit the same properties of HD MSCs in terms of proliferation, phenotype, in vitro differentiation, TLR expression, immunosuppressive ability, inhibition of DC differentiation and activation, the use of autologous MSCs in cell therapy of autoimmune diseases should be submitted to attentive evaluation and treatment.