Recommendations for nomenclature and definition of cell products intended for human cardiovascular use

Abstract

Exogenous cell-based therapy has emerged as a promising new strategy to facilitate repair of hearts damaged by acute or chronic injury. However, the field of cell-based therapy is handicapped by the lack of standardized definitions and terminology, making comparisons across studies challenging. Even the term “stem cell therapy” is misleading because only a small percentage of cells derived from adult bone marrow, peripheral blood, or adipose tissue meets the accepted hematopoietic or developmental definition of stem cells. Furthermore, cells (stem or otherwise) are dynamic biological products, meaning that their surface marker expression, phenotypic and functional characteristics, and the products they secrete in response to their microenvironment can change. It is also important to point out that most surface markers are seldom specific for a cell type. In this article, we discuss the lack of consistency in the descriptive terminology used in cell-based therapies and offer guidelines aimed at standardizing nomenclature and definitions to improve communication among investigators and the general public.

Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cells for Therapeutic Angiogenesis

“…MSCs, also recognized as mesenchymal precursor cells or medicinal signaling cells, comprise a specialized population of progeniture cells that can be differentiated in a laboratory into different types of tissue, and they have been reported to secrete bioactive molecules and facilitate the recovery of ischemic or injured tissues [56][57][58][59][60]. According to recommendations by the Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network, MSCs in cultureexpanded cells should be recognized through characteristics of adherence to tissue culture plastic, expressing CD90, CD73, and CD105 markers, not expressing CD45, CD34, CD14, CD11B, CD79a, CD19, or HLA-DR markers, and capacity for multilineage differentiations, such as osteocytes, chondrocytes, and adipocytes.…”