Homing of endogenous bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to rat infarcted myocardium via ultrasound-mediated recombinant SDF-1α adenovirus in microbubbles

Stem cells can promote myocardial regeneration and accelerate the formation of new blood vessels. As such, transplanted stem cells represent a promising treatment modality for acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Stem cells spontaneously home to the infarcted myocardium using chemotaxis, in which the stromal cell-derived factor (SDF-1α) has been shown to be one of the most important chemokines. However, spontaneously secreted SDF-1α is short-lived, and therefore does not meet the needs of tissue repair. In this study, adenoviruses carrying SDF-1α genes were loaded on microbubble carriers and the adenoviruses were released into AMI rats by ultrasound targeted microbubble destruction. The possibility of in vivo self-transplantation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) induced by overexpression of SDF-1α in the infarcted myocardium was explored by detecting the number of BMSCs homing from the peripheral blood to the myocardial infarcts. The concentration of SDF-1α in peripheral blood was significantly higher after transfection, and the number of BMSCs was significantly higher in the peripheral blood and infarcted area. Further analyses indicated that the number of homing BMSCs increased with increased SDF-1α expression. In conclusion, our results suggest that ultrasound mediated transduction of exogenous SDF-1α genes into myocardial infarcted AMI rats can effectively promote the homing of endogenous BMSCs into the heart. Moreover, the number of homing stem cells was controlled by the level of SDF-1α expression.