Expression patterns of immune genes in long-term cultured dental stem cells

Long-term culture system is used to prevent the impediment of insufficient cells and is good for low starting materials such as dental pulp or periodontal ligament. In general, although cell viability and functionality are the most common aspects taken into consideration in culturing cells for a long term, they may not truly represent the biological state of the cells. Hence, we explored the behaviour of another important aspect which is the immune properties in long-term cultured cells. Dental pulp stem cells from deciduous (SHED; n = 3) and permanent (DPSCs; n = 3) teeth as well as periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs; n = 3) were cultured under identical culture condition. The immune properties of each cell lines were profiled at passage 2 [P2] and passage 9 [P9] as early and late passages, respectively. This was further validated at the protein level using the Luminex platform. A major shift of genes was noticed at P9 with SHED being the highest. SHED cultured at P9 displayed many genes representing pathogen recognition (P < 0.001), immune signalling (P < 0.001, pro-inflammatory (P < 0.001), anti-inflammatory (P < 0.001) and immune-related growth and stimulation factor (P < 0.001) as compared to DPSCs and PDLSCs. Surprisingly, SHED also expressed many cytotoxicity genes (P < 0.001). Communally, instabilities of immune genes from our findings suggest that long-term cultured cells may not be feasible for transplantation purposes. A complete biological characterization covering all major aspects including immune properties should be made as prerequisite criteria prior to the use of long-term cultured stem cells in clinical settings.