Minced Umbilical Cord Fragments as a Source of Cells for Orthopaedic Tissue Engineering: An In Vitro Study

Abstract

A promising approach for musculoskeletal repair and regeneration is mesenchymal-stem-cell- (MSC-)based tissue engineering. The aim of the study was to apply a simple protocol based on mincing the umbilical cord (UC), without removing any blood vessels or using any enzymatic digestion, to rapidly obtain an adequate number of multipotent UC-MSCs. We obtained, at passage 1 (P1), a mean value of 4, 2 × 106 cells (SD 0,4) from each UC. At immunophenotypic characterization, cells were positive for CD73, CD90, CD105, CD44, CD29, and HLA-I and negative for CD34 and HLA-class II, with a subpopulation negative for both HLA-I and HLA-II. Newborn origin and multilineage potential toward bone, fat, cartilage, and muscle was demonstrated. Telomere length was similar to that of bone-marrow (BM) MSCs from young donors. The results suggest that simply collecting UC-MSCs at P1 from minced umbilical cord fragments allows to achieve a valuable population of cells suitable for orthopaedic tissue engineering.

Differentiation of Human Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells Into Insulin Producing Beta Cells for Diabetic Therapy.

“…In the present study 95% of undifferentiated cells expressed CD-73, CD-90, CD-105,Vimentin, none of the cells expressed CD-34, CD-45 and low expression was observed for HLA-DR after the second passage, confirming that these are MSCs. (Figure 3), which is similar to other published reports [14,36].…”

Umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells: Their advantages and potential clinical utility

“…These fragments are aligned and seeded regularly on the tissue culture-treated dishes. After the tissue fragments are attached to the bottom of the dish, the culture medium is poured slowly and gently, so as not to detach the fragments, and the culture is started [29][30][31] . The culture medium is replaced every 3-7 d for 2-4 wk until fibroblast-like adherent cells reach 80%-90% confluence.…”

Comparison of different methods for the isolation of mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord matrix: Proliferation and multilineage differentiation as compared to mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord blood and bone marrow

“…They have several mesenchymal cell markers, immunosuppressive ability, hematopoiesis-supportive function, and differentiation potential similar to BM-MSCs. Sections of UC, such as umbilical cord matrix (UCM, the Wharton's jelly surrounding the umbilical vessels), contain MSCs, and large amounts can be isolated from the whole UC without tissue dissection (Lu et al, 2006;Marmotti et al, 2012). However, due to the low frequency of MSCs in the umbilical vein endothelial and subendothelial layers, the success rate of isolation, one of the most important factors from a clinical standpoint, was low.…”