1 Institute of Biomedical Engineering, College of Medicine and College of Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
2 Department of Ophthalmology, Zhongxing Branch, Taipei City Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
J Dent Res. 2019 Jul;98(7):786-794. doi: 10.1177/0022034519847122. Epub 2019 May 28.
Dysfunctional salivary glands (SGs) are a clinical challenge due to the lack of effective treatments. Cell therapy with stem/progenitor cells may improve this situation by providing promising therapeutic solutions. Therefore, exploring abundant cellular sources is important. Three major pairs of SGs are located in different anatomic regions: the parotid glands, the submandibular glands, and the sublingual glands. Although SG stem/progenitor cells can be isolated and cultivated from all major SGs as salispheres, the differences among SG origins remain unclear. In this study, salispheres were successfully isolated from all major SGs. The salispheres demonstrated unique cellular features that originated from their native tissues. The characteristic expression profiles and cellular features of SG stem cells were demonstrated in all salispheres. When they were transplanted into irradiated animals, the salispheres were all capable of improving the saliva secretion that was disrupted by irradiation. Typical histologic structures could be observed in most parts of the treated glands, and the fibrotic environments of irradiated submandibular glands were remodeled by all salispheres regardless of origins. This study characterized the cellular features and in vivo effects of salispheres that were derived from different anatomic origins. The results suggest the possibility of functional redundancy among distinct pairs of major SGs, which is useful for the design of cell therapy to treat dysfunctional glandular organs.
唾液腺功能障碍是临床面临的一大挑战，目前缺乏有效的治疗方法。干细胞/祖细胞疗法通过提供有前途的治疗方法可能改善这种情况。因此，探索丰富的细胞来源很重要。三大对唾液腺位于不同的解剖区域：腮腺、颌下腺和舌下腺。尽管可以从所有主要唾液腺作为唾液球体中分离和培养唾液腺干细胞/祖细胞，但唾液腺起源之间的差异尚不清楚。在这项研究中，成功地从所有主要唾液腺中分离出唾液球体。唾液球体表现出独特的细胞特征，这些特征来源于其固有组织。所有唾液球体均表现出唾液腺干细胞的特征性表达谱和细胞特征。当将它们移植到辐射动物中时，唾液球体都能够改善因辐射而破坏的唾液分泌。在大多数处理过的腺体部位都可以观察到典型的组织学结构，并且所有唾液球体都可以重塑受辐射的颌下腺的纤维性环境，而与起源无关。本研究描述了源自不同解剖起源的唾液球体的细胞特征和体内效应。结果表明，不同的主要唾液腺对之间存在功能冗余的可能性，这对于治疗功能障碍性腺体器官的细胞治疗设计很有用。
