“Background: Recent studies suggested that individuals with metabolic disorders have altered function of adipocytes and adipose stem cell subpopulations, which impairs tissue homeostasis, promoting insulin resistance and diabetes development. The non-psychoactive phytocannabinoid CBD was found to modulate adipose tissue metabolism, however, its exact role in controlling ASCs’ fate is still poorly understood.
Objectives: This investigation aimed to elucidate whether pretreatment of ASCs with CBD can protect against ER stress development and maintain the cytophysiological properties of cells.
Methods: Human ASCs were cultured under control and adipogenic conditions. Prior to the experiments, cells in the experimental group were pretreated with CBD following the addition of an ER stress inducer-tunicamycin. After the experiments, the cells were subsequently tested for expression of the apoptotic, ER stress, and anti-inflammatory-related genes using RT-qPCR. Oxidative stress was analysed with flow cytometric assays.
Results: Cells pretreated with CBD displayed decreased apoptosis and enhanced proliferation rate. Additionally, the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and miRNAs was significantly reduced. The obtained results also demonstrated an obvious reduction in intracellular accumulated ROS and NO, as well as mitigated ER stress through the down-regulation of IRE-1, PERK, CHOP, and ATF6 transcripts upon CBD treatment.
Conclusion: The presented data provide the evidence that CBD protects ASCs against ER stress development and its complications and, thus, offers new insights for the management of obesity through the regulation of adipose tissue dynamics.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36078578/
“The regenerative potential of ASCs in the treatment of multiple disorders lies in their differentiation, migration, and secretory activity. However, these conditions impair the cytophysiological properties of ASCs, limiting their application in autologous therapies. What is more, impaired ASCs in vivo suffer from reduced multipotency and produce a vast number of inflammatory cytokines and oxidative stress factors, which in turn contributes to disease progression. Hence, development of strategies that reverse their senescence and ageing, and, as a consequence, restore regenerative properties are strongly desirable.
To our knowledge, this is the first report on the impact of CBD pretreatment on metabolically impaired ASCs suffering from ER stress. Our current study revealed that CBD modulates ASCs metabolism by promoting their growth kinetics, multipotency, and viability, which due to enhanced ER stress were strongly limited. Taking into account that CBD lacks psychopharmacological activity, further studies aiming at unravelling its influence on different stem cells populations are recommended and justified. Further studies on the effects of CBD on ASCs could explore other measures of its regenerative capacity than studied in the presented research. Furthermore, unravelling the precise molecular mechanisms of action via CBD that protect ASCs against cytophysiological impairment would be valuable. While our findings are supported by the existing literature, our research was not free of limitations. An important drawback is that we did not explore which cannabinoid receptors are responsible for the observed effects of CBD. Thus, further experiments utilizing agonists and antagonists of cannabinoid receptors are necessary to elucidate which of them are involved in CBD’s way of action.
Taking into consideration that ASCs are nowadays a commonly applied tool in regenerative medicine, the ability to enhance their stemness and regenerative potential may contribute not only to more effective therapies but also to significantly reducing the costs associated with their isolation and expansion.”