Static pressure-induced neural differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells.

Growing experimental evidence suggests that physical cues play an important role in regulating the fate of stem cells and stimulating their differentiation behavior. We report here that static pressure enables the differentiation of rat bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) into neural-like cells within several hours in the absence of disruptive bio-factors or chemicals. The realization of such differentiation is supported by the observation of characteristic morphology of neural-like cells with neurites, and an up-regulated expression level of neural-specific markers. Our finding also demonstrates the utility of the static pressure-based approach for in situ and specifically localized creation of neural cell systems, thereby providing profound implications for developing therapeutic application of stem cells.