Wound healing properties of mesenchymal conditioned media: Analysis of PDGF, VEGF and IL-8 concentrations

Regenerative medicine has become a mainstay in recent times, and employing stem cells to treat several degenerative, inflammatory conditions has resulted in very promising outcomes. These forms of cell-based therapies are novel approaches to existing treatment modalities. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) are emerging as the most versatile amongst all the existing stem cell technologies as they are multipotent and have shown promise in treating several disease conditions. The mode of action of these cells can be based on cell-cell contact or by paracrine effects. In this study, we compared the concentrations of the cytokines PDGF, IL-8, and VEGF between conditioned and spent media of MSCs to evaluate their potential therapeutic properties for wound healing in inflammatory conditions. We hypothesized that conditioned media contains higher concentrations of wound healing cytokines compared to spent media. We found that while IL-8 and VEGF were present in highest concentrations in conditioned media, PDGF was present in maximal amounts in spent media.