The most significantly cause for salivary dysfunction is radiation therapy. Unfortunately, at present there is no satisfactory treatment for this condition. Affected patients mainly suffer from rampant dental caries, frequent mucosal infections, and difficulties while swallowing and chewing dry food, all of which considerably decrease their quality of life. New therapeutic strategies were suggested to handle post-radiation impairment including; gene therapy, tissue engineering and recently stem cell biology.Previous reports suggested that basal epithelial alfa6beta1 positive immunostained cells localized in the ductal compartment might be considered as salivary gland progenitor cells. In this respect we hypothesized that salivary gland basal epithelial cells (alfa6beta1 positive immunostained) may be a superior candidate as adult salivary gland stem cells and therefore, can be used as aoutologous graft cells for replacing damaged functional salivary acinar cells after radiation therapy damage. Objectives: Isolation, cultivation and characterization of alfa6beta1 positive salivary gland cells. Methods: Adult rats were subjected to stress conditions followed by isolation of salivary gland parenchymal cells using the Percoll gradient technique. Thereafter, alfa6beta1 positive cells were secluded by MACS methodology and analyzed by FACS before and after cultivation. Results:We found by FACS analysis that stress conditions increased alfa6beta1 positive isolated cells from 6% to 29% in the whole epithelial gland fraction population (These numbers correspond to 0.5% and ~ 2.5% from the whole gland respectively). Cultivation of these cells for 17 days lead to 98% alfa6beta1 positive cell enriched fraction. These cells are currently cloned, characterized with additional stem cell markers and further examined for their ability to differentiate to adult salivary gland cells.Conclusions:adult basal alfa6beta1 salivary gland cells can be isolated and cultivated and might be used for future new therapeutic regiments.

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