Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells are sorts of somatic stem cells with the ability of self-renewal and multi-differentiation. It has advantages such as plentiful source, no effect on the donor, convenience for collection and transportation, no heterogenous rejection, and no ethical dispute.
OBJECTIVE: To review in the biological characteristics and progression of the human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells.
METHODS: CNKI, Wanfang, and PubMed databases were searched by computer with key words of “human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells, biocharacteristics, gene analysis, induce differentiation” both in English and Chinese.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The shape of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells is like typical fibroblast. The antigens of cell surface are various. The cells high-express interstitial cell mark and integrin receptor, otherwise the cells do not express hematopoietic system mark, allostimulatory molecule CD80, CD86 and CD40, human leukocyte antigens HLA-DR, HLA-G, HLA-DP, HLA-DQ, endothelium mark CD31 or CD33, CD14, CD56 and so on. As hematopoietic stem cells and embryonic stem cells, human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells could not only differentiate into osteocytes, cartilage cell, hepatic cells and cardiac muscle cells in vitro, but also differentiate dopaminergic neuron, skeletal muscle cell, endothelial cell, islet cell and so on in vivo. But the research of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells has some problems that need to be resolved extremely. For example, the normalization of separation method and culture condition, how to control the growth and differentiation of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells and so on.