Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the devastating conditions leading to functional and neurological deficits following road traffic accidents. To date, there is no definite treatment for repairing damaged spinal cord tissue. In this regard, cell therapy opens a new window in front of scientists by using different cells such as mesenchymal stem cells, olfactory ensheathing cells, Schwann cells,...

Hyaline cartilage is a vascular and neural tissue with scanty chondrocytes and limited regenerative ability. After some serious injuries of the cartilage, healing process will take place through the formation of fibrocartilage structures. Currently, tissue engineering and cell therapy are 2 interesting therapeutic fields dealing with regenerative medicine. In this regard, tissue&...

Directed differentiation of embryonic stem (ES) cells has enormous potential to derive a wide variety of defined cell populations of therapeutic value. To achieve this, it is necessary to use protocols that promote cell differentiation under defined culture conditions. Furthermore, understanding the mechanisms of cell differentiation in vitro will allow the development of rationale approaches t...

Background: Cell therapy is a potential therapeutic approach for neurodegenerative disorders. Human umbilical cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hUCB-MSCs) are an appropriate source of stem cells for use in various cell-based therapies. Objectives: In this study, we examined a real-time PCR approach for neural differentiation of hUCB-MSCs in vitro. Materials and Methods: MSCs were cultu...

Human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hBM-MSCs) have been investigated as a new cell-therapeutic solution due to their capacity that could differentiate into neural-like cells. Extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF-EMFs) therapy has emerged as a novel technique, using mechanical stimulus to differentiate hBM-MSCs and significantly enhance neuronal differentiation to af...

Stem cells are a powerful resource for cell-based transplantation therapies, but understanding of stem cell differentiation at the molecular level is not clear yet. We hypothesized that the Wnt pathway controls stem cell maintenance and neural differentiation. We have characterized the transcriptional expression of Wnt during the neural differentiation of hADSCs. After neural induction, the exp...

In vertebrate embryogenesis, neural induction is the earliest step through which the fate of embryonic ectoderm to neuroectoderm becomes determined. Cells in the neuroectoderm or neural precursors actively proliferate before they exit from the cell cycle and differentiate into neural cells. However, little is known about the relationship between cell division and neural differentiation, althoug...

Parent of origin imprints on the genome have been implicated in the regulation of neural cell type differentiation. The ability of human parthenogenetic (PG) embryonic stem cells (hpESCs) to undergo neural lineage and cell type-specific differentiation is undefined. We determined the potential of hpESCs to differentiate into various neural subtypes. Concurrently, we examined DNA methylation and...

INTRODUCTION It is known that periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs) can differentiate into cementoblast-like cells, adipocytes and collagen-forming cells. However, whether PDLSCs are able to differentiate into Schwann cells and which method is best for their neural induction remain unknown. We attempted to determine whether PDLSCs possessed the potential for neural differentiation in vitro. ...

In both embryonal carcinoma (EC) and embryonic stem (ES) cells, the differentiation pathway entered after treatment with retinoic acid (RA) varies as it is based upon different conditions of culture. This study employs mouse EC cells P19 to investigate the effects of serum on RA-induced neural differentiation occurring in a simplified monolayer culture. Cell morphology and expression of lineage...