Human umbilical cord blood as a source of Transplantable progenitor cells
by: waynechad@gmail.com
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Word Count: 309
Stem cells are found in all multi-cellular organism. They retain the ability to renew
themselves and can differentiate into a diverse range of specialised cell
types.
As
stem cells can be grown and transformed into specialized cells with
characteristics consistent with cells of various tissues such as muscles or
nerves through cell culture, their use in medical therapies has been proposed.
In particular, embryonic cell lines, autologous embryonic stem cells generated
through therapeutic cloning, and highly plastic adult stem cells from the
umbilical cord blood or bone marrow are touted as promising candidates.
Human
umbilical cord blood cells have many advantages as grafts for cell transplantation
because of the immaturity of newborn cells compared with adult cells. In
contrast to their hematopoietic and mesenchymal potential, it remains unclear
whether umbilical cord blood cells have endodermal competences. Here, with a
view to utilize umbilical cord blood cells for cell transplantation into
injured liver, we investigated the hepatic potential of umbilical cord blood
cells both in vitro and in vivo. We determined the most efficient conditions
leading umbilical cord blood cells to produce albumin. In a novel primary
culture system supplemented with a combination of growth/differentiation
factors, about 50% of umbilical cord blood cells in 21-day cultures expressed
albumin, and the albumin cells coexpressed hepatocyte lineage markers. The
albumin expressing cells were able to proliferate in the culture system.
Moreover, in the cell-transplantation model into liver-injured severe combined
immunodeficient mice, inoculated umbilical cord blood cells developed into
functional hepatocytes in the liver, which released human albumin into the sera
of the recipient mice. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that human
umbilical cord blood is a source of transplantable hepatic progenitor cells.
Our finding may have relevance to clinical application of umbilical cord blood
derived cell transplantation as a novel therapeutic option for liver failure.
About the Author
Wayne Channon, Director of
Cells4Life Ltd, a Stem cell and cord blood storage expert. They specialise in
cord blood collection.
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