Neurons from human mesenchymal stem cells display both spontaneous and stimuli responsive activity

ABSTRACT Mesenchymal stem cells are one of the promising tissue specific stem cell source for neural tissue regeneration applications. Previous studies on human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) derived neurons have been limited and not statisfactory in terms of neuronal activity. In this study, we analysed the functionality of bone marrow hMSCs differentiated into neural protein expressing cells by a single step cytokine based induction protocol. Neurons from both primary hMSCs and hMSC cell line displayed spontaneous activity (≥75%) as demonstrated by Ca ++ imaging. Furthermore, when electrically stimulated, hMSC induced neurons (hMd-Neuron) matched the response of a typical neuron in the process of maturation. Our results reveal that enriched neurothrophic factors enhance differentiation capacity of bone marrow hMSCs into high yielding functional neurons with spontaneous activity and mature into electrophysiologically active state. hMd-Neurons have the potential to be used as a tool for disease modelling of neuropathologies and neural differentiation studies.