Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Nov 7, 2019; 25(41): 6190-6204
Published online Nov 7, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i41.6190
Therapeutic potential of menstrual blood stem cells in treating acute liver failure
Pan-Pan Cen, Lin-Xiao Fan, Jie Wang, Jia-Jia Chen, Lan-Juan Li
Pan-Pan Cen, Department of Infectious Diseases, Hangzhou First People’s Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310006, Zhejiang Province, China
Lin-Xiao Fan, Jie Wang, Jia-Jia Chen, Lan-Juan Li, State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases; National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Diseases; The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310003, Zhejiang Province, China
Author contributions: Cen PP and Chen JJ conceived and designed the research; Cen PP, Fan LX, and Wang J performed the experiments, and collected the data; Cen PP and Fan LX analyzed the data; Cen PP wrote the paper; all authors reviewed the paper; Li LJ provided financial support and gave final approval of the manuscript.
Supported by the State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Disease; The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 2015KF04.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: This study was approved by the Animal Care Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine (reference number: ZJU2015-511-09).
Conflict-of-interest statement: No competing financial interests exist.
Data sharing statement: (1) The copyright on any open access article in a journal published by BPG is retained by the authors; (2) Authors grant BPG the license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher; and (3) Authors grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details, and publisher are identified.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Lan-Juan Li, MD, PhD, Professor, Senior Researcher, State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases; National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Diseases; First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, 48 Qingchun Road, Shangcheng District, Hangzhou 310003, Zhejiang Province, China. ljli@zju.edu.cn
Telephone: +86-571-87236759
Received: August 12, 2019
Peer-review started: August 12, 2019
First decision: August 27, 2019
Revised: September 11, 2019
Accepted: October 17, 2019
Article in press: October 17, 2019
Published online: November 7, 2019
Core Tip

Core tip: In this study, we investigated for the first time the therapeutic potential of intraportally transplanted menstrual blood stem cells (MenSCs) in treating pigs with acute liver failure, and showed that MenSC treatment improved liver function and coagulation, alleviated the progression of liver injury, and prolonged the survival time of pigs. Additionally, ex vivo imaging also demonstrated the ability of MenSCs to home to pathological hepatic environments after transplantation. MenSC transplantation has the potential to be used as an available source for treating acute liver failure in future clinical therapy.