The investigation of diverse physiological and therapeutic impact of cell based products derived from human Cumulus cells

The mammalian oocyte is enveloped by particular somatic cells namely cumulus cells (CCs) that support the oocyte maturation, fertility, and viability by providing the nutrients and energy. CCs have a unique extracellular matrix rich in hyaluronic acid (HA), which is responsible for the cumulus cell expansion event having a part in ovulation, fertilization, and determination of oocyte quality. At in vitro fertilization laboratories, partial removal of CCs is required to evaluate egg maturity and to have a better visualization of the oocyte during an intracytoplasmic sperm injection procedure. In this study, discarded human cumulus tissues were used to reveal the value of HA-rich CCs. The usage of conditioned medium, recovered from the primary culture of CCs, was designed for repairing functionally distorted human nucleus pulposus cells (hNPCs) through the induction of enhanced chondrogenesis. Enlightening the impact of cumulus conditioned medium (CCM) on wound healing and angiogenesis was targeted. In line with these goals, differentiation of hNPCs into chondrocytes and osteocytes with CCM as the basal medium containing traditional differentiation agents were induced upon isolation and characterization of hCCs and hNPCs. The effects were detected by differentiation-specific cell stains and gene expression analysis. Scratch assay and tube formation assay was performed for discovering the effect of CCM on wound healing after detecting the presence of angiogenesis-related genes in hCCs. Our results showed that cumulus cell-conditioned media promoted the chondrogenesis and osteogenesis of hNPCs. Furthermore, a significant increase in the number of branches and wound closure area was detected only in groups cultured in CCM compared to the control. Remarkably, it was shown that the hCCs can be suggested as an alternative model to the widely used models in angiogenesis assays. When all these are considered, trashed cumulus cells are a very special and promising cell source that should be highlighted as a treasure.