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Mesenchymal Stem Cells Neuronal Differentiation Ability: A Real Perspective for Nervous System Repair?
- Source :
- Current Stem Cell Research & Therapy. 6:82-92
- Publication Year :
- 2011
- Publisher :
- Bentham Science Publishers Ltd., 2011.
-
Abstract
- Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) are a bone marrow-derived population present in adult tissues that possess the important property of dividing when called upon and of differentiating into specialized cells. The evidence that MSCs were able to transdifferentiate into specialized cells of tissues different from bone marrow, in particular into nervous cells, opened up the possibility of using MSCs to substitute damaged neurons, that are normally not replaced but lost, in order to repair the Nervous System. The first neuronal differentiation protocols were based on the use of a mixture of toxic drugs which induced MSCs to rapidly acquire a neuronal-like morphology with the expression of specific neuronal markers. However, many subsequent studies demonstrated that the morphological and molecular modifications of MSCs were probably due to a stress response, rather than to a real differentiation into neuronal cells, thus throwing into question the possible use of MSCs to repair the nervous system. Currently, some papers are suggesting again that it may be possible to induce neuronal differentiation of MSCs by using several differentiation protocols, and by accompanying the morphological evidence of differentiation with functional evidence, thus demonstrating that MSC-derived cells not only seem to be neurons, but that they also function like neurons. In this review, we have attempted to shed light on the capacity of MSCs to genuinely differentiate into nervous cells, and to identify the most reliable protocols for obtaining neurons from MSCs for nervous system repair.
- Subjects :
- Adult
Nervous system
Cellular differentiation
Neuronal differentiation
Population
Medicine (miscellaneous)
Biology
BIO/16 - ANATOMIA UMANA
medicine
Animals
Humans
education
Stem cell transplantation for articular cartilage repair
Neurons
education.field_of_study
Animal
Stem Cells
Mesenchymal stem cell
Cell Differentiation
Mesenchymal Stem Cells
General Medicine
Anatomy
Neuron
Nerve Regeneration
Mesenchymal Stem Cell
medicine.anatomical_structure
nervous system
Bone marrow
Neuroscience
Function (biology)
Human
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 1574888X
- Volume :
- 6
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Current Stem Cell Research & Therapy
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....90e23313034dca312d103b362154a1b1
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.2174/157488811795495486