Background: There are no published studies on stem cells from equine cord blood although commercial storage of equine cord blood for future autologous stem cell transplantations is available. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have been isolated from fresh umbilical cord blood of humans collected non-invasively at the time of birth and from sheep cord blood collected invasively by a surgical intrauterine approach. Mesenchymal stem cells isolation percentage from frozenthawed human cord blood is low and the future isolation percentage of MSCs from cryopreserved equine cord blood is therefore expectedly low. The hypothesis of this study was that equine MSCs could be isolated from fresh whole equine cord blood.

CB-MSC and BM-MSC were both capable of producing hyaline-like cartilage in vitro . However, in this study the MSC from umbilical cord blood appeared to have more chondrogenic potential than the BM-MSC based on the cells tested and parameters measured.