A General Theoretical Framework to Study the Influence of Electrical Fields on Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftForschungsartikelBeigetragenBegutachtung

Beitragende

  • Jonathan Dawson - , Universität Rostock (Autor:in)
  • Poh Soo Lee - , Professur für Biomaterialien (Autor:in)
  • Ursula van Rienen - , Universität Rostock (Autor:in)
  • Revathi Appali - , Universität Rostock (Autor:in)

Abstract

Mesenchymal stem cell dynamics involve cell proliferation and cell differentiation into cells of distinct functional type, such as osteoblasts, adipocytes, or chondrocytes. Electrically active implants influence these dynamics for the regeneration of the cells in damaged tissues. How applied electric field influences processes of individual stem cells is a problem mostly unaddressed. The mathematical approaches to study stem cell dynamics have focused on the stem cell population as a whole, without resolving individual cells and intracellular processes. In this paper, we present a theoretical framework to describe the dynamics of a population of stem cells, taking into account the processes of the individual cells. We study the influence of the applied electric field on the cellular processes. We test our mean-field theory with the experiments from the literature, involving in vitro electrical stimulation of stem cells. We show that a simple model can quantitatively describe the experimentally observed time-course behavior of the total number of cells and the total alkaline phosphate activity in a population of mesenchymal stem cells. Our results show that the stem cell differentiation rate is dependent on the applied electrical field, confirming published experimental findings. Moreover, our analysis supports the cell density-dependent proliferation rate. Since the experimental results are averaged over many cells, our theoretical framework presents a robust and sensitive method for determining the effect of applied electric fields at the scale of the individual cell. These results indicate that the electric field stimulation may be effective in promoting bone regeneration by accelerating osteogenic differentiation.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
Aufsatznummer557447
FachzeitschriftFrontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology
Jahrgang8
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 20 Okt. 2020
Peer-Review-StatusJa

Externe IDs

ORCID /0000-0003-2285-3621/work/181860170

Schlagworte

Schlagwörter

  • data-driven modeling, electrical stimulation, human mesenchymal cells, mathematical modeling, mean-field approach, stem cell differentiation