E Fathi - Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
R Farahzadi - Hematology and Oncology Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
I Vietor - Division of Cell Biology, Biocenter, Medical University Innsbruck,Innsbruck, Austria
S Javanmardi - Department of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

Background: C-kit+ Bone marrow progenitor cells have re-cently gained much attention due to the therapeutic effects fol-lowing their administration into the infarcted heart as evidenced by animal studies and by a recent clinical trial. However, inject-ing these cells in the heart is associated with poor differentia-tion into specialized cardiac cell types and with rapid death of the engrafted cells. With the ultimate goal of advancing cardiac stem cell therapy, we sought to facilitate the differentiation of c-kit+ Bone marrow progenitor cells into cardiac cell types (e.g. cardiomyocytes, smooth muscle cells, endothelial cells and car-diac fibroblasts) by overexpressing selected cardiac transcrip-tion factors in vitro. On the other hand, the effective role of L-carnitine as strong and effective antioxidant in improved car-diac function has been proven.Materials and Methods: For this purpose, mononuclear cells were isolated from rat bone marrow and c-kit+ (CD117) cells were separated with MACs. In the following, c-kit+ cells were treated with L-carnitine for 7, 14 and 21 days and gene expres-sion of cardiac TFs, including Gata4 and TBX5 were evaluated by Real time PCR.Results: It was shown that L-carnitine cause to significant in-crease in gene expression of Gata4 and TBX5. In detail, it was found that L-carnitine promoted the cardiogenesis of c-kit+ progenitor cells.Conclusion: It was concluded that L-carnitine could be used for facilitating the differentiation of c-kit+ Bone marrow pro-genitor cells into cardiac cell types with the aim of cell-based therapy.

L-carnitine, C-kit+ Progenitor Cells, Cardiogenesis