Identification of subpopulations in mesenchymal stem cell-like cultures from human umbilical cord

Abstract

Background: A variety of cell types can be identified in the adherent fraction of bone marrow mononuclear cells including more primitive and embryonic-like stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), lineage-committed progenitors as well as mature cells such as osteoblasts and fibroblasts. Different methods are described for the isolation of single bone marrow stem cell subpopulations -beginning from ordinary size sieving, long term cultivation under specific conditions to FACSbased approaches. Besides bone marrow-derived subpopulations, also other tissues including human umbilical cord (UC) have been recently suggested to provide a potential source for MSC. Although of clinical importance, these UC-derived MSC populations remain to be characterized. It was thus the aim of the present study to identify possible subpopulations in cultures of MSC-like cells obtained from UC. We used counterflow centrifugal elutriation (CCE) as a novel strategy to successfully address this question.

Transplanted Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells Modify the In Vivo Microenvironment Enhancing Angiogenesis and Leading to Bone Regeneration

“…On the contrary, the classical expansion protocols for BM-MSCs, accepted for clinical use by the regulatory agencies [4], still employ FBS with FGF-2 as the medium additional supplement, which provides excellent results [37,38]. However, with regard to the present study, it should be noted that no major changes were observed in the phenotype characteristics and properties of BM-MSCs expanded in the presence of PL or FBS [34,36,39].…”

The Effect of Hypoxia on Mesenchymal Stem Cell Biology

“…51,52 This condition led them to suffer from limited nutrient and oxygen sources. 53,54 Different functional characteristics have been confirmed for hypoxia-induced MSCs from different sources. MSCs have some immunomodulatory effects, 55 especially autocrine or paracrine diverse activity of cytokines, and growth factors of bone marrow-derived MSCs can be modulated in hypoxic conditions.…”

Umbilical cord fibroblasts: Could they be considered as mesenchymal stem cells?

“…In addition, the use of different media and culture conditions may also have an effect on the heterogeneity of UC-MSC population isolated in different laboratories; contributing to the selection and expansion of specific cell populations, which may have not the same behavior under specific culture conditions. In this context, a strategy based on counterflow centrifugal elutriation was used to identify different subpopulations in cultured UC-MSC [17] . The authors revealed that UC-MSC cultures were composed of different sized populations.…”