Applications of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSCs) have been documented for diseases occur in the sports system, the central nervous system, the cardiovascular system etc. However, poor viability of donor stem cells after transplantation limits their therapeutic efficiency. Although the autophagy theory has been reported, the underlying mechanisms are still poorly understood. Isolation and culture methods of mesenchymal stem cells are currently concentrate on four ways. Overall, BM-MSCs have both important research significance and clinical application value in cell replacement therapy, gene therapy and reconstruction of tissues as well as organs especially for myocardial infarction (MI). In this article, we review the biological characteristics of BM-MSCs and its research progress especially in MI. bone marrow which has aroused people's interest (1,4,5). Furthermore, BM-MSCs can act as support hematopoietic cells, promoting the growth of hematopoietic stem cells. Above all, BM-MSCs have broad application prospects in tissue engineering, cell transplantation and gene therapy because of the advantages of easy separation, amplification and easy operation in vitro and in vivo (6)(7)(8)(9). Taken together, BM-MSCs have important research significance and clinical application value in cell replacement therapy, gene therapy and tissue regeneration. In this article we review the latest progress, limitation as well as clinical application of BMMSCs.
Isolation of BM-MSCsBM-MSCs are obtained mainly from bone marrow aspiration, while human BM-MSCs are generally drawn from the anterior superior iliac spine (10). They are also available from the tibia, femur, sternum, lumbar spine. The acquisition sites of BM-MSCs in large animals are the same as humans, however, rabbits' BM-MSCs need to be extracted in the middle of the tibia or femur bone marrow (11-13). The proportion of BM-MSCs nucleated cell population accounts for less than 0.0001% of them, however they can easily be isolated and expanded by using certain cell culture techniques (10). Stro-1 monoclonal antibody is usually used to isolate BM-MSCs which grow by attaching to the wall in laminin adhesion culture plate with low concentration of serum and CD45-/A-glycoproteins (14). In the past, BM-MSCs isolation methods were mainly concentrated on density gradient centrifugation method, differential adherence screening method, flow cytometry sorting method as well as immune beads method (15). However, high purity of BM-MSCs cannot be obtained by the four kinds of separation methods as described above. Nowadays, selecting the appropriate factor based on different reactivity of BM-MSCs to growth factors, to stimulate the proliferation, obtaining a higher proportion the mesenchymal stem cells has been regarded as a more accurate isolation method. Meanwhile, the new method of using 3 microns diameter plastic petri dish to screen BMMSCs, whose homogeneity are greater than 98%, with capacity of proliferation, self-renewal and have the potential to diff...