Abstract:

BACKGROUND: With the development of regenerative medicine and cell therapy, mesenchymal stem cells have become a hot spot because of its wide source, easy isolation, strong proliferation and multi-directional differentiation ability.
OBJECTIVE: To overview the research progress in biological characteristics and differentiation potential of mesenchymal stem cells.
METHODS: The databases of PubMed, Springer Link, and Wanfang were retrieved for papers concerning discovery, nomenclature, biological characteristics and differentiation potential of mesenchymal stem cells published from January 2000 to September 2010 with key words of “mesenchymal stem cells, differentiation, transdifferentiation”. A total of 132 articles were retrieved.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Mesenchymal stem cells have been found for a long period, and extensively distributed in vivo. Its proliferation ability can be affected by multiple factors. Mesenchymal stem cells can secrete various cytokines, produce a series of extracellular matrix molecule, and express many kinds of surface markers, but not unicity and belong to immune deficiency cells. The isolation and purification method included the whole bone marrow adherence screening method and density gradient centrifugation. Its identification should synthesize many aspects. With the exception of differentiation into mesodermal cell lineage, mesenchymal stem cells can transdifferentiate into neural cells, hepatocytes, islet cells and epithelial cells. Transdifferentiation mechanism mainly contains heterogeneous theory, nuclear reprogramming theory and embryonic stem cell residual theory.