Despite promising preclinical outcomes in animal models, a number of challenges remain for human clinical use. In particular, expanding a large number of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) in vitro in the absence of animal-derived products is the most critical hurdle remaining to be overcome to ensure the safety and efficiency of human therapy. To develop in vitro culture conditions for EPCs d...

Objective. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) isolated from the umbilical cord and their conditioned media (CM) can be easily obtained and refined compared with stem cells from other sources. Here, we explore the possibility of the benefits of these cells in healing diabetic wounds. Methodology and Results. Delayed wound healing animal models were established by making a standard wound on the dorsum...

Endothelial colony-forming cells (ECFCs) are a population of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) that display robust proliferative potential and vessel-forming capability. Previous studies have demonstrated that a limited number of ECFCs may be obtained from adult bone marrow, peripheral blood and umbilical cord (UC) blood. The present study describes an effective method for isolating ECFCs fro...

Differences in the immunological reactivity of umbilical cord (UC) and adult peripheral blood (APB) T cells are poorly understood. Here, we show that IL-7, a cytokine involved in lymphoid homeostasis, has distinct regulatory effects on APB and UC lymphocytes. Neither naive nor memory APB CD4(+) cells proliferated in response to IL-7, whereas naive UC CD4(+) lymphocytes underwent multiple divisi...

Serum levels of IL-1beta, IL-6 and TNF-alpha were measured in 48 healthy, termed neonates on the 1st (N1), 5th (N5) and 40th (N40) day after birth, compared with those in maternal serum (MS), umbilical cord (UC) and adult controls. Cytokine values in N1 and N5 were significantly elevated, than those in UC and in controls (P<0.0001). IL-1beta and IL-6 declined significantly from N1 to N40 (P<0.0...

abstractbackground: fetal bovine serum (fbs) is widely used in cell culture laboratories,risk of zoonotic infections and allergic side effects create obstacles for its use inclinical trials. therefore, an alternative supplement with proper inherent growthpromotingactivities is demanded.objective: to find fbs substitute, we tested human umbilical cord blood serum(hucs) for proliferation of human...

As translational clinical researchers familiar with the risk-benefit of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in autoimmune diseases, we are intrigued by the recent report of umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell (UC-MSC) transplantation in treatment-refractory systemic lupus erythematosus nephritis by Wang and colleagues. They report the results of an open-label single-arm multicenter phase I...

stem cells are naïve or master cells. this means they can transform into special 200 cell types as needed by body, and each of these cells has just one function. stem cells are found in many parts of the human body, although some sources have richer concentrations than others. some excellent sources of stem cells, such as bone marrow, peripheral blood, cord blood, other tissue stem cells and hu...

Aberrant autophagy played an important role in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, especially in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). In this study, we showed that T cells from SLE patients had higher autophagic activity than that from healthy controls. A correlation between autophagic activity and apoptotic rate was observed in activated T cells. Moreover, activation of autophagy with rapa...

background: umbilical cord blood (ucb) is an alternative source of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (hsct), used in leukemia treatment. cd26+ cells, a fraction of cd34 positive cells, are a major population of ucb cells which negatively regulate the in vivo homing and engraftment of hscs. cd26 is highly expressed in various cells such as hscs, immune cells, fibroblasts, and epithelial ce...