Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 7, 2015; 21(45): 12822-12834
Published online Dec 7, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i45.12822
Heat shock pretreatment improves stem cell repair following ischemia-reperfusion injury via autophagy
Peng-Fei Qiao, Lei Yao, Xin-Chen Zhang, Guo-Dong Li, De-Quan Wu
Peng-Fei Qiao, Lei Yao, Xin-Chen Zhang, De-Quan Wu, Department of General Surgery, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China
Guo-Dong Li, Department of General Surgery, the Fourth Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China
Author contributions: Wu DQ and Qiao PF designed the research and drafted the manuscript; Qiao PF, Yao L, Zhang XC and Li GD carried out all the experiments; all the authors read and approved the final published version.
Supported by Grants from the Clinical Research Special Fund of Wu Jieping Medical Foundation, No. 320.6750.12263.
Institutional review board statement: All of the study procedures were reviewed and approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: This study was conducted in compliance with the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals published by the National Academy Press. All procedures involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Harbin Medical University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. All efforts were made to minimize suffering.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest in this study.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendices, statistical codes and datasets are available from the corresponding author at wudequanhum@163.com. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing. No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: De-Quan Wu, PhD, Professor, Department of General Surgery, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, No. 246, Xuefu Road, Nangang District, Harbin 150001, Heilongjiang Province, China. wudequanhmu@163.com
Telephone: +86-13796635887 Fax: +86-451-86605535
Received: April 16, 2015
Peer-review started: April 18, 2014
First decision: June 19, 2015
Revised: July 2, 2015
Accepted: September 2, 2015
Article in press: September 2, 2015
Published online: December 7, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: We investigated the interaction between autophagy and apoptosis in mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) exposed to H2O2. We found that heat shock pretreatment (HSP)-induced autophagy served as a protective mechanism. HSP for 2 h improved the therapeutic potential of MSCs in the treatment of ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury in rats and enhanced autophagy via the p38MAPK/mTOR pathway, which is involved in the protective effects of HSP on H2O2-induced MSC apoptosis. Systemic administration led to an increase in HSP-MSCs homing to I/R liver cells compared with MSCs, resulting in a significant improvement in liver function, accelerated mitogenic response and alleviation of histopathological damage.