Abstract
Background and Objectives
The low number of umbilical cord blood cells is an important barrier to successful bone marrow transplantation. Therefore, the growth of these cells while maintaining their functional characteristics is of great importance. Culturing cells on 3D scaffolds like DBM has greatly contributed to the simulation of the mechanical and chemical micro-environment of the bone marrow tissue. There are also specific compounds for proliferation without differentiation of cells one of which is nicotinamide.
 
Materials and Methods
In this experimental study, hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) were cultured 7 days in DBM under the following conditions of (1) negative control, (2) cytokine, (3) nicotinamide, (4) nicotinamide and cytokine. After 7 days, cell count, purity using flow cytometry, colony forming unit assay and apoptosis were evaluated and performed. The data were analyzed using Anova.
 
Results
Our results indicated that in all cases, the combination of nicotinamide and cytokine was accompanied with more proliferation, more CD34⁺ cells, less apoptosis, and higher colony-forming ability than other groups.
 
Conclusions 
Nicotinamide is a very suitable compound for the development of umbilical cord blood cells  given the role of the former in preventing epigenetic changes that are the outcome of laboratorial cell culture and the simulation of bone marrow niche by DMB.