Gender Difference in the Proliferation Rate of Human Umbilical Cord-derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) are gaining increasing attention by the clinician and basic researchers, because of their specific advantages. But, the gender difference of hUC-MSCs is usually neglected, which is not beneficial to the delicate operations using hUC-MSCs. This research originated from the finding during the routine research involving for hUC-MSCs and aimed to investigate the proliferation rate difference between the male and the female hUC-MSCs systematically. In this research, under the same conditions, the consecutive 14 batches of the male and the female hUC-MSCs were prepared and identified. Then, the proliferation rates of these cells were measured and analyzed statistically. Finally, the transcriptional expression patterns for the 12 proliferation-related genes were representatively analyzed by quantitative PCR (qPCR). The results showed, under the same preparative conditions, the male hUC-MSCs proliferated faster that the female counterpart significantly; meanwhile, for the transcriptional expression levels for most of the 12 proliferation-related genes, the male was higher than the female. This research was the first report to investigate the proliferation rate difference between the male and female hUC-MSCs and preliminarily clarify the possible mechanism, which expanded the understanding for hUC-MSCs.