Diversity of Ion Channels in Human Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Patients

Human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (hBM-MSCs) represent a potentially valuable cell type for clinical therapeutic applications. The present study was designed to evaluate the effect of long-term culturing (up to $10^{th}$ passages) of hBM-MSCs from eight individual amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients, focusing on functional ion channels. All hBM-MSCs contain several MSCs markers with no significant differences, whereas the distribution of functional ion channels was shown to be different between cells. Four types of $K^+$ currents, including noise-like $Ca^{+2}$-activated $K^+$ current ($IK_{Ca}$), a transient outward $K^+$ current ($I_{to}$), a delayed rectifier $K^+$ current ($IK_{DR}$), and an inward-rectifier $K^+$ current ($K_{ir}$) were heterogeneously present in these cells, and a TTX-sensitive $Na^+$ current ($I_{Na,TTX}$) was also recorded. In the RT-PCR analysis, Kv1.1,, heag1, Kv4.2, Kir2.1, MaxiK, and hNE-Na were detected. In particular, ($I_{Na,TTX}$) showed a significant passage-dependent increase. This is the first report showing that functional ion channel profiling depend on the cellular passage of hBM-MSCs.