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Abstract

Adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) are compelling prospects in neural regeneration because of neurogenesis related growth factors they produce, leading to the possibility of being a paracrine, cell free treatment. By using biological secretions of these Adipose-derived stem cells to promote neural regeneration instead of direct implantation, unlike many other stem cell based therapies, this study aims to forgo many of the drawbacks of current cell-based stem cell therapies like immune response, high costs, etc. Keeping this in mind, this study aimed to optimize multiple culture conditions of the ASCs to produce a secretome full of pro-neurogenetic factors. These pro-neuroregenerative factors, Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), are highly implicated in angiogenesis and neurogenesis.. By using SY5Y neuroblastoma neurons as a model, we tested the ability of the ASC secretome to promote in vitro neurite regrowth. The results of the enrichment of the SY5Y neurons with ASC secretome are encouraging as they matched, and in some cases, outperformed the positive control. Lastly, low level exogenous electrical stimulation was applied to ASCs in hopes to further optimize the production of VEGF and BDNF and thus set a precedent as a proof of concept for electrically aided neuron regeneration. Resulting gene expression analysis determined that low level electrical stimulation increased VEGF production by 1.5 fold. Repeating the neurite extension tests with secretome from the electrically stimulated ASCs yielded no significant difference in outgrowth between electrically stimulated and not electrically stimulated cells.

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