Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Anatomy

Diabetes is prevailing everywhere and adversely affecting the lives of individuals.Treatment of diabetes using insulin administration, oral antidiabetic drugs, whole pancreas and islets of Langerhans transplantation faced considerable limitations. Mesenchymal Stem cells (MSCs) inspired medical research with a promising new era in the treatment of DM having an advantage of easy short operation with minimal invasiveness of patients. Objective: To compare the effects of bone marrow MSCs and adipose tissue MSCs on the islets of Langerhans in diabetic rats, detect the enhancing role of melatonin (MT) on MSCs and elicit the mechanisms that induce islet cell regeneration.Material and methods: Sixty adult male albino rats were divided into six equal groups: group I (Control) received nothing, the remaining fifty were given a single dose of STZ of 50 mg/kg intraperitoneally, diagnosed diabetic by blood glucose higher than 220 mg/dl and were divided into: group II (STZ) received nothing, group III received a single intravenous injection of BM-MSCs, group IV received a single intravenous injection of AD-MSCs, group V received a single intravenous injection of MT pretreated BM-MSCs, group VI received a single intravenous injection of MT pretreated AD-MSCs. Results: AD-MSCs were significantly better compared to BM-MSCs in improving body weight, blood glucose, fasting serum insulin, IL-17, IL-10, area percent of PKH labelled MSCs, PCNA positive islets cells nuclei, Caspase-3 immuno-expression, PDX1 gene expression, Glut2 gene expression. MT pretreated MSCs gave significantly better results compared to untreated ones.Conclusion: MSCs could be a promising treatment of DM. MT pretreated AD-MSCs were the best in preservation and regeneration of the islet of Langerhans of the pancreas.

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