Non- ionizing radiation as a non invasive strategy in regenerative medicine: the effect of Ca2+-ICR on Mouse Skeletal Muscle Cell growth and differentiation.

Controlling cell differentiation and proliferation with minimal manipulation is one of the most important goals for cell therapy in clinical applications. In this work, we evaluated the hypothesis that the exposure of myoblast cells (C2C12), to non ionizing radiation (tuned at extremely low frequency electromagnetic field at calcium ion cyclotron frequency of 13.75 Hz), may drive their differentiation towards a myogenic phenotype. C2C12 cells exposed to Ca2+-ICR showed a decrease in cellular growth and an increase in the G0/G1 phase. Severe modifications in shape and morphology and a change in the actin distribution were revealed by the phalloidin fluorescence analysis. A significant up-regulation at transcriptional and translational levels of muscle differentiation markers such as Myogenin (MYOG) Muscle Creatine Kinase (MCK) and Alpha Skeletal Muscle Actin (ASMA) was observed in exposed C2C12 cells. Moreover, the pre-treatment with nifedipine (a L-Type voltage-gated Ca2+ channel blocker) led to a reduction of the Ca2+-ICR effect. Consequently it induced a down-regulation of the MYOG, MCK and ASMA mRNA expression affecting adversely the differentiation process. Therefore our data suggest that Ca2+-ICR exposure can upregulate C2C12 differentiation. Although further studies are needed, these results may have important implications in myodegenerative pathology therapies.
PMID: 22676393