Establishment of Mesenchymal Stem Cell-like Cells from Human Umbilical Cord Vein as a New Source of Adult Stem Cells for the Reconstruction of Neural Tissue Injury

Abstract

Mesenchymal stem cells(MSCs) can differentiate into different cell lines including neuron, astrocyte and other types of cell and MSCs population can undergo extensive proliferation. They are noncycling and constitutively express telomerase activity in vivo. Despite the fact that bone marrow represents the predominant source of MSCs, the use of bone marrow-derived cells is not always acceptable due to a high level of viral infection and a significant drop in cell number and proliferative/differentiation capacity with age. Thus, the search for possible alternative MSC sources as a candidate of neural tissue reconstruction remains to be validated. Method : In the present study, we isolated a cell population derived from the endothelium and subendothelium of the umbilical cord vein which possesses morphological and immunophenotypical characters similar to those of MSCs isolated from bone marrow. After 3 days of culture, two kinds of cell populations were found consisting of adherent cells with endothelial cell-like and fibroblast-like morphology. When these cells were subcultured 12 times over a period of 3 months, all cells uniformly exhibited fibroblastoid morphology resembling MSCs obtained from human bone marrow, and some part of these cells successfully differentiated with neuronal population.