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Characterization of clonogenic stromal cells isolated from human endometrium

Department of Immunochemistry, Institute of Biology and Immunology of Reproduction, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria¹ Ob/Gy Hospital ‘Dr Shterev’, 1330 Sofia, Bulgaria² Laboratory of Clinical Immunology, University Hospital ‘Sv.I.Rilski’, 1431 Sofia, Bulgaria³ Ginecological Clinics, National Oncology Hospital, 1756 Sofia, Bulgaria⁴ University Ob/Gyn Hospital ‘Maichin Dom’, 1437 Sofia, Bulgaria⁵ Department of Molecular Immunology, Institute of Biology and Immunology of Reproduction, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 73 Tzarigradsko Shosse, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria

Correspondence should be addressed to S Kyurkchiev; Email: skyurkchiev{at}mail.bg

Human endometrium is an object of extensive restructuring and remodeling during the female reproductive life and it is quite tempting to assume that these periodic changes happen with the participation of cells that should have the basic characteristics of multipotent cells. The aim of this study was to search for the presence of cells with plastic adherence, clonogenicity, and differentiation in human endometrium. To this end, human endometrial stromal cells were cultured in vitro for more than 15 passages. Flow cytometry analysis of the cultured cells showed that they were positive for CD29, CD73 and CD90, which are considered to be the markers of cells with mesenchymal origin. The cells were negative for the hematopoietic cell markers (CD45, CD34, CD14, CD3, CD19, CD16/56, and HLA-DR). Further, it was shown that the cultured cells had 15% clonogenic efficiency and could be induced to differentiate into adipogenic cells containing typical lipid-rich vacuoles. These results demonstrate that the human endometrium contains a low number of cells with the characteristics of endometrial stromal stem/progenitor cells, which seem to belong to the family of the mesenchymal stem cells. It can be speculated that these cells are engaged into the monthly restructuring and remodeling of human endometrium.