Bone mesenchymal stem cells pretreated with erythropoietin enhance the effect to ameliorate cyclosporine A-induced nephrotoxicity in rats.

An increasing number of experiments and clinical trials have demonstrated the safety, feasibility, and efficacy of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)-based therapies for the treatment of various diseases. The main drawbacks of MSC therapy are the lack of specific homing after systemic infusion and early death of injected cells because of the injury micro-environment. We pretreated bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) with erythropoietin (EPO) to investigate their positive effect on cyclosporine A (CsA)-induced nephrotoxicity. BMSCs were incubated with different concentrations of EPO (10, 100, 500, and 1000 IU/mL) for 24 and 48 h, and their proliferation rate, cytoskeletal morphology, migration ability, and the expression of CXCR4 were evaluated to determine the optimal pretreatment conditions. To investigate the therapeutic effects of BMSCs pretreated with EPO in CsA-induced nephrotoxicity, we established CsA-induced in vitro and in vivo toxicity models. In our in vitro study, preconditioning of BMSCs with 500 IU/mL EPO for 48 h induced a marked increase in their proliferation rate, cytoskeletal rearrangement, migration in the scrape-healing assay, and migration toward injured HK2 cells. In vivo, EPO-BMSCs showed higher ability to improve renal function than BMSCs, and in CsA-induced rats treated with EPO-BMSCs, interstitial lymphocyte infiltration, tubular swelling, necrosis, and interstitial fibrosis decreased. We demonstrated that pretreatment with 500 IU/mL EPO before infusion markedly increased the homing ability of BMSCs, and obviously ameliorate CsA-induced nephrotoxicity in rats.