Hypoxic preconditioning enhances the therapeutic potential of the secretome from cultured human mesenchymal stem cells in experimental traumatic brain injury.

Bone-marrow-derived human MSCs (mesenchymal stem cells) support repair when administered to animals with TBI (traumatic brain injury) in large part through secreted trophic factors. We directly tested the ability of the culture medium (or secretome) collected from human MSCs under normoxic or hypoxic conditions to protect neurons in a rat model of TBI. Concentrated conditioned medium from cultured human MSCs or control medium was infused through the tail vein of rats subjected to TBI.