The uterus is referred to as a dynamic organ due to chemical stimuli such as menstrual hormone change, but it is also affected by a spontaneous contractile activity by its myometrium. We hypothesized that mechanical loading leads to physiological change in human endometrial stromal cells (hESCs). In this study, we applied 15% of uniaxial cyclic strain for 7days in hESCs and reported that the differentiation of smooth muscle cells was enhanced by cyclic strain. After loading cyclic strain into hESCs, it also higly up-regulated the mRNA expressions of HB-EGF and ITGB3 that are known as key markers for bloastocyst attachment and endometrial receptivity, respectively. Moreover, we firstly found out that cyclic strain also elevated the production level of cAMP in hESCs, so that inhibitor tests using SQ22536 and H-89 were carried out to identify the involvement of cAMP signaling pathway in the promotion of differentiation for smooth muscle cells under mechanical loading. Therefore, we suggested the possibility of using mechanical stimuli to regenerate uterin tissue with smooth muscle cells.
