Adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (ASCs) are very interesting in several laboratory animals and humans because they are easy to harvest and expand to generate millions of cells from a small quantity of fat. ASCs are known as useful materials for clinical applications in human cell therapy and as a donor cell in somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Here, we investigated if 1) minipig ASCs can be isolated, self-renewed and differentiated into multiple tissue lineages, 2) ASCs can be a suitable donor cell type for generation of cloned pig. In order to isolate ASC, adipose tissues were collected from inguinal region of a 6-year-old female minipig. The ASCs were attached to the culture dish with a fibroblast-like morphology. They expressed cell-surface marker characteristics of stem cell, underwent osteogenic, adipogenic, myogenic, neurogenic and chondrogenic differentiation when exposed to specific differentiation-inducing conditions. To investigate its potential as donor cell for cloning, we respectively carried out SCNT using ASC, adult skin fibroblast (ASF) and fetal fibroblast (FF) derived from same minipig. The ratio of blastocysts to 2-cell embryos and total cell number of blastocysts were monitored as experimental parameters. In results, cleavage and developmental competence to blastocysts rate showed no significant difference among the three groups. On the other hand, total cell numbers of blastocysts derived from ASC and FF were significantly higher than in ASF (89±7.9 and 105±5.5 vs. 57.5±5.2, respectively). Our results demonstrated that ASC have potential compared to ASF and FF in terms of the in vitro development and blastocyst formation ability. In further study, we will investigate the in vivo developmental ability of ASC as donor cell for pig cloning. * This study was supported by IPET (#311011-05-1-SB010), RNL Bio (#550-20120006), Institute for Veterinary Science, the BK21 program, TS Corporation and Optifarm Solution.

• Hyun Ju Oh(College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-744, Korea)
• Jung Eun Park(College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-744, Korea)
• Min Jung Kim(College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-744, Korea)
• Geon A Kim(College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-744, Korea)
• Eun Jung Park(College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-744, Korea)
• Jin Choi(College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-744, Korea)
• Joon Ho Moon(College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-744, Korea)
• Byeong Chun Lee(College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-744, Korea) 교신저자