MOSCOW, February 7. /TASS/ A group of Russian scientists has succeeded in developing a breakthrough and cheap method of boosting cell growth with cerium dioxide nanoparticles.

It was the slow growth of cells at laboratory conditions which until now limited the success of scientists and made the treatment with cell medications extremely expensive and difficult to access.

In the current research, the main investigation object was fibroplasts, the cells of connective tissues which play an important role in healing wounds. As an activator of growth, researchers have applied a colloidal solution (sol) of cerium dioxide nanoparticles synthesized at N.S. Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry, said the press service of Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics (ITEB RAS). The solution has been added to the breeding ground for the primary fibroplasts culture taken from mice embryos. The most efficient solutions were those with concentration of 7-10 mol/l.

Battle against stress

"When incubating cells in vitro, i.e. outside the body, non-optimal conditions are created. At in vitro conditions, the level of oxygen is raised in comparison with those in vivo which has an impact on the cellular metabolism. In particular, the cells experience an oxidative stress. By adding CeO2 nanoparticles, the level of oxidative stress is lowered with the normal growth conditions in the body being mimicked. The stem cells culture starts to grow more readily," - commented junior research assistant at Laboratory of Growth of Cells and Tissues and ITEB RAS Anton Popov on the main idea of the research.

He has also specified, that the results of the investigation on mice fibroplasts have been published already in the last May in the journal "Material Science and Engineering C": "Taken mice as an example, we have shown for the first time that such molecular mechanisms are principally possible." The latest scientific article devoted to the influence of CeO2 nanoparticles of the human cells has been published in December in "Nanomechanics Science and Technology: An International Journal". In this article, the authors described experiments of Popov's group on mesenchymal stem cells segregated from dental pulp of human and navel-cord of newborns.

Apart from researchers from ITEB RAS and Kurnakov Institute, the scientists from Tomsk State University and H. M. Berbekov Kabardino-Balkaria State University have taken part in the investigation.

The studies on the fibroplasts have been financially supported by Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research, Russian Research Foundation, and Foundation for Moscow Government.

Cell therapy law

The current study of Popov research group is particularly pertinent with respect to the new Russian law on the biomedical cell products came into effect on Jan.1 which permits using only living cells for therapy. In contrast to transplantology, the body of a patient does not reject incoming biomaterial when treating with living cells.

Biomedical cell products are principally different both from medications and from medical devices. To obtain such products, one takes a piece of biomaterials sized about several millimeters from the body of a donor. "While fabricating, the cells are scaled, modified, combined with some other medications resulting in biomedical cell products with new features. Taking into account modern technological capabilities, one might obtain neurons or cordis cells from a very small piece of skin taken in course of biopsy. At this point, the science reaches infinite possibilities," - said Andrey Vasiliev, one of the developers of the new law, director of N.K. Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology RAS.