| A predominant challenge in the discovery approach to curative leukemia is investigating the effect
of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) on leukemic cells. We aimed to investigate the role of MSCs in targeting
telomerase enzyme and consequently telomere length of leukemic cells. For this purpose, the KG1 cell as
leukemia cell line was co-cultured with MSCs in the trans-well system. After seven days of co-culture, KG1
cells were collected, and telomerase activity, telomere length, and hTERT gene expression were analyzed by
PCR-ELISA TRAP assay and real-time PCR, respectively. Also, the potentially involved ERK pathway was
analyzed at gene and protein levels by real time PCR and flow cytometry, respectively. It was found that MSCs
caused a significant decrease in telomerase activity, telomere length, and hTERT gene expression. The
following results showed that MSCs resulted in a significant decrease in the ERK expression levels. It can be
concluded that the co-culture of MSCs with KG1 cells be involved in the telomerase targeting via ERK
signaling pathways. This study concluded that the co-culture of MSCs with AML leukemic cells could secrete
a significant amount of cytokines that cause to inhibit the proliferation of AML cell lines via ERK signaling
pathway. The recognition of cytokines as well as growth factors involved in the anti-proliferative effect of
MSCs requires further investigation. This effect as a therapeutic strategy could be considered in the basic
experimental studies. |