Umbilical Cord Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Impose Better Paracrine Effect Than Bone Marrow Mesenchyma Stem Cells in Nucleus Pulposus Regeneration

Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration accounts for most cases of low back pain, which usually starts from the inner nucleus pulposus (NP) area. Increasing investigation into NP regeneration highlights mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) as a potential stem cell source to repopulate the damaged and dehydrated NP. Despite the majority of researches investigate the role of MSC derived from bone marrow, MSC has been identified from various sources with different characteristics. MSC from bone marrow may not be the idea cell source for NP repair, as they are demonstrated to have a tendency of spontaneous osteogenesis [1]. There are indications that fetal or close to fetal tissue sources contain cells with relatively undifferentiated phenotype with respect to MSC from adult sources. Moreover, evidences have shown that umbilical cord (C)-MSC may have better chondrogenic differentiation potential than bone marrow (B)-MSC [2]. We hypothesize CMSC might be a more suitable stem cell source than BMSC for NP regeneration. The aim of this research is to analyse the paracrine effect of MSC on NP cells, and compare the effect of MSC from human bone marrow and human umbilical cord in an attempt to identify a better MSC source for future clinical application.