Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (hBMSCs) due to its property are considered one of the most promising stem cell for regeneration of the injured myocardiocytes, and have become the hot point for the study of myocardial tissue engineering.
OBJECTIVE: To retrospectively analyze senescence mechanism of hBMSCs and to establish immortalized method of hBMSCs according to these mechanisms.
METHODS: The first author retrieved PubMed Database, Wanfang Database, Springer and Science Direct Database for articles on senescence mechanism of hBMSCs and the immortalized method published from 1990 to 2010.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The senescence and loss of the stem cell property of BMSCs were found during the cell cultivation in vitro, which profoundly hinders clinical application of hBMSCs. In light of the mechanism of senescence including p53-p21 and p16-pRb, researchers have put intensive effort in finding ways to build up immortalized hBMSCs; methods for immortalization involving KP cells that transfect HPV16 E6E7 gene into BMSCs or 3A6 cells that both HPV16 E6E7 gene and phTERT -IRES2-EGFP are transfected into hBMSCs. Methods above had prolonged the BMSC survival. However, DNA transfection-based methodologies entail some risk of genomic recombination or insertional mutagenesis as well as innate antiviral responses. Thus, the success rate of transfection is low. The search for ways to avoiding senescence without incurring genetic change has become the focus of intense research effort. Standard methods for building up immortalized BMSCs require further study.