Stem cells are the base for cell therapy due to their ability to self-renew, differentiate into other cell types, and live throughout the life of an organism. The initial cell therapy was bone marrow transplantation; bone marrow that contains haematopoietic stem cells is transferred from a healthy donor into a sick recipient to transfer the healthy genotype1,2. Stem cell therapy approach may be possible in corals, where there is genotypic variation in heat tolerance that influences survival during increased water temperatures3–5. However, we first need the ability to reliably isolate and transplant stem cells in Hexacorallia, which includes stony corals and sea anemones6. In this work, we used the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis as our model for candidate stem cell transplantation, as it is the only hexacorallian species that has fluorescent-tagged transgenic strains7. We established cell transplantation to show that there are cell populations exhibiting the functional characteristics of stem cells. We showed that a subpopulation of cells from N. vectensis can be transplanted from donor to recipient, are long-lived and self-renewing, can proliferate and differentiate, can integrate into the recipient, and rescue recipient animals treated with lethal doses of a chemotherapeutic agent. Lastly, we showed that this subpopulation can be enriched by sorting, using species non-specific cell markers and that similar subpopulations of cells can be isolated from other hexacorallians, including stony corals. This lays a foundation for the possibility of stem cell-based therapy in species of Hexacorallia.

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