Hucmscs

hUCMSCs (Cyagen Biosciences, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China) were identified by the short tandem repeat (STR) method. hUCMSCs were subcultured in Dulbecco’s modified Eagle medium/F12 (Gibco, Grand Island, NY, USA) comprising 10% Exo-free fetal bovine serum (FBS; Gibco) and 1% penicillin-streptomycin solution (Zeye Biotechnology, Shanghai, China) in a 37°C incubator with 5% CO₂. The cells at passage 3 that reached approximately 80% confluence were selected for subsequent analyses.
hUCMSCs were allocated into 5 groups: blank group, oe-IFN-β group (transfected with pcDNA3.1-IFN-β plasmids), oe-negative control (NC) group (transfected with pcDNA3.1-NC plasmid), si-IFN-β [transfected with IFN-β siRNA^{18 (link)}], and si-NC (transfected with Scramble siRNA). hUCMSCs were transfected with 10 nmol/L pcDNA3.1-IFN-β, pcDNA3.1-NC, IFN-β siRNA or Scramble siRNA at a final concentration of 3.75 µL/mL using Lipofectamine RNAiMAX Transfection reagent (Cat# 13778150, Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA).^{19 (link)} pcDNA3.1-IFN-β, pcDNA3.1-NC, IFN-β siRNA, and Scramble siRNA were provided by GenePharma (Shanghai, China).

Human umbilical cord MSCs (hUCMSCs) and PC12 cells were obtained from Wuhan Procell (China). The hUCMSCs were maintained in HUMSC medium that contains 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS; Gibco, USA) and 1% penicillin/streptomycin. PC12 cells were cultured in IMDM complete medium. All cells were kept in 37 °C incubator that filled with 5% CO₂.