Mesenchymal Stem Cells and Umbilical Cord as Sources for Schwann Cell Differentiation: their Potential in Peripheral Nerve Repair

Abstract

Schwann cells are important components of the peripheral glia that form myelin, serving as the microenvironment of nerve fibers in the peripheral nervous system (PNS). Damage to the PNS induces the differentiation and activation of Schwann cells to produce factors that strongly promote axonal regrowth, and subsequently contribute to remyelination, which is crucial for the recovery of function. Although the collection and transplantation of native Schwann cells are effective for the treatment of neural diseases, isolation of Schwann cells results in new damage to other peripheral nerve segments and causes undesirable iatrogenic injury in the donor. Furthermore, the expansion of native Schwann cells to obtain a sufficient number of cells for clinical application within a reasonable period is technically difficult. Therefore, a method to induce easily accessible and highly proliferative cells to differentiate into cells with Schwann cell properties would be very practical and is highly desirable. Recently, regenerative medicine has focused on mesenchymal stem cells because they are easily accessible from various kinds of mesenchymal tissues such as the umbilical cord, bone marrow, and fat tissue. Mesenchymal stem cells are highly proliferative and it is easy to obtain an adequate number of cells. Notably, while mesenchymal stem cells are mesodermal lineage cells, they have an ability to cross oligolineage boundaries previously thought uncrossable to achieve transdifferentiation. In this review, we focus on the potential of mesenchymal stem cells, particularly umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells, to differentiate into functional Schwann cells, and discuss the prospective clinical application of these cells to PNS regeneration.

Neural Differentiation of Human Umbilical Cord Blood-derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

“…Recently, MSCs have been the focus of intensive investigations because of their relative advantages (22)(23)(24). The generation of MSC-NPCs from hUCB-MSCs can be used for basic research in order to develop effective cells for regenerative therapy (11).…”

Characterization of the Phenotypic Features, Immuno-modulatory Properties and Therapeutic Potentials of Wharton’s Jelly-Derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells

“…The first report of induction system for differentiating Schwann cells from BM-MSCs appeared in 2001 (Dezawa et al 2001). Recent studies showed that UCMSCs differentiated into Schwann cells capable of supporting neural regeneration and in constructing myelin (Matsuse et al 2010;Kuroda et al 2011). Some studies suggest that UC-Schwan cells are viable alternatives to native Schwann cells and may be used for cell-based therapy for nerve injuries.…”

“…Schwan cells play important roles in axonal regeneration and myelin construction in spinal cord injuries. As Schwann cells can be differentiated from various sources of MSCs and not only from WJ, a vis-à-vis comparison of various sources of MSCs will reveal the potential of WJ-derived MSCs for therapeutic application in spinal cord injury (Kuroda et al 2011). Furthermore, human umbilical cord-derived MSCs (hUCMSCs) have been shown to ameliorate neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) in rat models (Zhang et al 2014).…”

Editorial - Connecting the Dots: The Promises of Wharton's Jelly Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Tissue Repair and Regeneration

“…In a further paper, Dezawa and co-workers [14] analyze the literature reports on the ability of WJC to differentiate towards Schwann cells. Given the intrinsic ability of activated Schwann cells to promote axonal regeneration in vivo, umbilical cord-derived MSC can be used to successfully derive mature Schwann cells for the regeneration of peripheral nerve.…”