Producing Human Amniotic Epithelial Cells-only Membrane for Transplantation

Human amniotic epithelial cells (hAECs), as pluripotent stem cells, have characteristics of immune privilege and great clinical potential. Here, we produced hAECs membrane consisting of single-layer hAECs and basal membrane (BM) of human amniotic membrane (hAM). In conventional methods, hAECs were isolated from hAM by repeated trypsin digestion. In this study, collagenase I and cell scraper were used to remove human amniotic mesenchymal stem cells (hAMSCs) from hAM and hAECs-only membranes were produced. These hAECs on the membranes were evaluated by surface biomarkers including epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM), stage-specific embryonic antigen 4 (SSEA4) and endoglin (CD105), transcriptional level of biomarkers including POU class 5 homeobox 1 (OCT4), sex determining region Y-box 2 (SOX2), fibroblast growth factor 4 (FGF4), immunofluorescence of cytokeratin-8 (CK-8), alpha smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and collagen type I alpha 1 chain (ColA1). Finally, the hAECs membrane were transplanted on skin-removed mice to evaluate its effect on wound healing. In comparison to the hAECs isolated by the conventional methods, the cells isolated by this proposed method had higher purity of hAECs, expressed higher in pluripotency related genes, and maintained an epithelium construction in a long-term culture. In mice application, the hAECs membrane effectively improved the skin wound healing. An efficient method was successfully established to produce hAECs membrane in this work which not only held promise to obtain hAECs in higher purity and quality, but also showed practical clinical potential.