In vitro expansion of human mesenchymal stem cells and hepatocytes using purified platelet derived growth factors, a potential therapeutic modality for liver fibrosis.

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and hepatocytes are considered valuable candidates for cell-based therapy. The use of free zoonotic media, as purified platelets derived growth factors (L-GF) and human platelet lysate (hPL), instead of using fetal bovine serum (FBS) to support the growth and proliferation of these cells could be used as a promising therapeutic tool in hepatic regeneration. This study aimed to evaluate the usage of purified platelet derived growth factors and platelet lysate in both MSCs and hepatocyte cultures and to compare them with the usage of FBS. MSCs and hepatocytes were cultured in growth media supplemented with L-GF or hPL and compared them to their culture in growth media supplemented with FBS. Cells were subjected to population doubling (PD) and generation time (GT) calculations. The best result for MSCs was that obtained by using 10% hPL or 10% FBS with the highest cell count, highest viability and shortest incubation time needed to reach confluency compared to supplementation with 10%, 20% or 30% L-GF. As for hepatocyte culture, the use of 10% FBS for supplementation of media used for hepatic cell proliferation showed better performance regarding cell count, viability, and incubation time to reach confluency compared to the use of either hPL or L-GF. In conclusion, our study showed that 10% hPL had the best results in MSCs culture which suggests that hPL could be a better alternative for the development of xenofree stem cell culture that can be used for many clinical applications. On the other hand, 10% FBS showed the best results in hepatocyte culture.