Unique Features and Clinical Application Prospect of Human Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Abstract

MSCs. Moreover, MSCs harvested from hUC are pluripotent and immunologically naive. The morphology and biological characteristic of hUC-MSCs resembles that of MSCs isolated from bone marrow. CONCLUSION: Cell-based therapy is an emerging field, which can offer great therapeutic potential in the complex human diseases. Compared with bone marrow, hUC has been considered as an ideal source of MSCs due to their little ethical obstacles, painless procedures involved, lower risk of immune rejection and convenient sources for autologous cell therapy. The rapid development of umbilical cord blood banks appears to provide plentiful supply of stem cells for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. INTRODUCTIONWith the increasing prevalence and incidence rates in the complex human diseases, e.g., bone regeneration disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetic disease and hematopoietic disease, there exits an urgent need to search for more effective and efficient therapies. Cellbased therapy is a novel and potential therapeutic approach, which can replace diseased or damaged cells with minimal side effects by introducing stem cells to these tissues or organs [1][2][3][4] . Currently, BMSCs have represented the golden type of stem cell for cell-based therapies. Experimental and clinical studies have showed the selfrenewal and multilineage differentiation capability of BMSCs [5][6][7] . However, it is quite difficult to produce large quantities of tissue/cells via bone marrow due to the decreasing frequency and differentiation potential with age. The harvesting of BMSCs also involves invasive procedures [8] . Therefore, the search for substitute of BMSCs is of ABSTRACT AIM: The purpose of the study was to summarize the unique features of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) and their clinical application prospect.

Regulating the fate of stem cells for regenerating the intervertebral disc degeneration

“…The cells have rapid self-renewal properties and possess various advantages, making them promising therapeutic candidates[ 147 ]. Some of the advantages are as follows: (1) They are accessible in massive amounts, considering plenty of umbilical cord (UC) with around 135 million births globally every year; (2) They can be effectively collected and manipulated without any adverse effect on the infant or mother; (3) There are no predetermined ethical issues that need to be managed in contrast with ESCs; (4) They show more significant proliferative potential compared to BM-MSCs[ 148 ]; (5) They possess minimal immunogenicity[ 149 ]; (6) There is minimal possibility of viral contamination[ 150 ]; (7) They possess a relatively large harvest size as compared to MSCs from BM[ 151 ]; and (8) They need less stringent antigenic typing, and there may be less rejection[ 152 ].…”