Published online before print August 23, 2007

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Copyright © 2007 American Society for Investigative Pathology
American Journal of Pathology, doi:10.2353/ajpath.2007.070051

Accepted for publication June 26, 2007.

Article

Transdifferentiation of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells into Epithelial-Like Cells

Abelardo Medina^*, Ruhangiz T. Kilani^*, Nicholas Carr, Erin Brown, and Aziz Ghahary^*@

From the British Columbia Professional Fire Fighters' Burn/Wound Healing Laboratory,* and the Division of Plastic Surgery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

^@ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: aghahary{at}interchange.ubc.ca.

	Abstract

Bone marrow-derived stem cells have the potential to transdifferentiate into unexpected peripheral cells. We hypothesize that circulating bone marrow-derived stem cells might have the capacity to transdifferentiate into epithelial-like cells and release matrix metalloproteinase-1-modulating factors such as 14-3-3 for dermal fibroblasts. We have characterized a subset of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) that develops an epithelial-like profile. Our findings show that these cells develop epithelial-like morphology and express 14-3-3 and keratin-5, -8 as early as day 7 and day 21, respectively. When compared with control, conditioned media collected from PBMCs in advanced epithelial-like differentiation (cultures on days 28, 35, and 42) increased the matrix metalloproteinase-1 expression in dermal fibroblasts (P 0.01). The depletion of 14-3-3 from these conditioned media by immunoprecipitation reduced the effect by 39.5% (P value, 0.05). Therefore, the releasable 14-3-3 from PBMC-derived epithelial-like cells is involved in this process. Our findings provide new insights into the PBMC transdifferentiation to generate epithelial-like cells and subsequently release of 14-3-3 that will disclose new therapeutic alternatives for different dermal clinical settings.