Mesenchymal cells isolation from Wharton’s jelly, in perspective to clinical applications

Recent years have seen progress in isolation and expansion of mesenchymal cells (MSCs) from human umbilical cord tissue, namely the Wharton’s jelly. Situated between the subamnion and the perivascular zone that surrounds the blood vessels (Troyer & Weiss, 2008), Wharton’s jelly is a matrix of mucous connective tissue, composed of fibroblast-like stromal cells, collagen fibers and proteoglycans, mainly hyaluronic acid (Can & Karahuseyinoglou, 2007). Several studies have demonstrated the proliferative capacity and multipotentiality of these stromal cells; they were shown to differentiate into a neural phenotype in vitro (Mitchell et al., 2003; Ma et al., 2005; Yang et al., 2005; Lu et al., 2006; Ma et al., 2006; Karahuseyinoglou et al., 2007) and into chondrocytes (Wang et al., 2004; Karahuseyinoglou et al., 2007), osteocytes (Wang et al., 2004; Sarugaser et al., 2005; Conconi et al., 2006; Karahuseyinoglou et al., 2007), cardiomyocytes (Wang et al., 2004), skeletal myocytes (Conconi et al., 2006), adipocytes (Conconi et al., 2006; Lu et al., 2006; Mesenchymal cells isolation from Wharton’s jelly, in perspective to clinical applications