Emerging Perspectives in TransplantationExperimental transplantationImproved Proliferation and Differentiation of Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells Into Vascular Endothelial Cells With Sphingosine 1-Phosphate

•S1P promotes proliferation of PR-MSCs.•S1P inhibits apoptosis of PR-MSCs cultured in hypoxia.•S1P improves endothelialization of PR-MSCs under VEGF induction.•S1P augments production of HGF, SDF-1, IGF-1 in PR-MSCs.

The practical use of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), considered to be the best candidate in the field of regenerative medicine, is limited by the low efficiency of MSC differentiation. Sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) could promote proliferation, survival, and differentiation of many types of cells, but its effects on MSCs remain elusive. In this study, S1P was added during primary MSCs (PR-MSCs) culture and the effects of S1P on proliferation, survival, and differentiation of PR-MSCs were evaluated. The results showed that S1P could improve PR-MSCs proliferation activity in a concentration-dependent manner, and the apoptosis of PR-MSCs cultured in hypoxia was significantly reduced in the S1P-treated group compared to the control group. After being cultured with vascular endothelial growth factor for 7 days, the specific genes of endothelial cells were highly expressed in S1P-treated PR-MSCs compared to control group, which coincided with the augumented production of hepatocyte growth factor, stromal cell-derived factor-1, and insulin-like growth factor-1. In summary, our results suggest that S1P can promote proliferation, survival, and differentiation into vascular endothelial cells of PR-MSCs. These results will promote the clinical application of PR-MSCs and deepen our understanding of the function mechanism of S1P.