Perivitelline fluid (PVF) of the horseshoe crab embryo has been reported to possess an important role
during embryogenesis by promoting cell proliferation. This study aims to evaluate the effect of PVF on the
expression of cell cycle regulatory genes from human dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) between different cell
passages viz. 4, 5, 6. The cells were treated with a single dose of PVF (26.89 mg/ml) PVF. Gene expression was
quantified for CDKNA2A, PTEN, MDM2 and TP53 genes using reverse transcriptase PCR. CDKN2A and MDM2
expression for treated and untreated DPSCs, expressed a similar pattern of expression. The higher expression of
CDKN2A showed that the treatment increased cell proliferation and prevented cell senescence. DPSCs with PVF
treatment showed increased expression of MDM2 at passage 4 and drastically declined expression at passage 5
and slightly increased at passage 6. TP53 expression of DPSCs treated group showed a higher expression
compared to untreated group. On the other hand, the expression of PTEN in DPSCs treated group started to
increase from passage 5 to 6. However, on the whole, the PTEN expression was higher than the untreated group
in all the passages studied here. The results showed that PVF could enhance cell cycle regulatory gene
expression in DPSCs as indicated by the higher expression of all the genes considered in this study at different
cell passages in the treated group compared to the untreated group. Mann Whitney test was utilized to determine
the significance of cell cycle regulatory genes expression between treated and untreated group. Significant
difference in expression of genes between the treated and untreated groups were found at all passages except
for CDKN2A gene whereby, its expression was not significantly different at passage 5 though it did express
slightly higher in PVF treated DPSCs.