Vet World   Vol.14   November-2021  Article-28

Effectiveness of mesenchymal stem cells cultured under hypoxia to increase the fertility rate in rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Background and Aim: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) transplanted into the testes of rats with testicular failure can help rescue fertility. However, the low viability of transplanted MSCs limits the success of this treatment. This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of MSCs cultured under hypoxia to increase the fertility rate in rats (Rattus norvegicus).

Materials and Methods: Bone marrow-derived MSCs (200 million cells/rat) were transplanted into male rat models with induced infertility (10 rats/treatment group) after 4 days of culture in 21% O2 (normoxia) and 1% O2 (hypoxia). Ten fertile and 10 untreated infertile rats served as controls. In the infertile male rats that had been fasted from food for 5 days, the fasting condition induced malnutrition and then resulted in testicular failure.

Results: The results indicated that the MSCs cultured under hypoxic conditions were more effective than those cultured in normoxic conditions as a treatment for testicular failure in infertile male rats based on the increased number of cells expressing p63 as a quiescent cell marker and ETV5 as a transcription factor expressed in Sertoli and germ cells. Furthermore, the structure of the seminiferous tubules, which contain spermatogonia, primary and secondary spermatocytes, and spermatid, Sertoli, and Leydig cells, was improved in infertile male rats treated with the MSCs cultured under hypoxic conditions.

Conclusion: The testicular transplantation of MSCs cultured under hypoxic conditions was an effective treatment for testicular failure in rats. Keywords: fertility, hypoxia culture, malnutrition, stem cell, testicular failure.

Keywords: fertility, hypoxia culture, malnutrition, stem cell, testicular failure.

How to cite this article: Safitri E, Purnobasuki H (2021) Effectiveness of mesenchymal stem cells cultured under hypoxia to increase the fertility rate in rats (Rattus norvegicus), Veterinary World, 14(11): 3056-3064.

Received: 22-06-2021  Accepted: 20-10-2021     Published online: 30-11-2021

Corresponding author: Erma Safitri   E-mail: erma-s@fkh.unair.ac.id

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2021.3056-3064

Copyright: Safitri and Purnobasuki, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.