RATIONALE Stem cells have been identified in the human lung; however, their role in lung disease is not clear. We aimed to isolate mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) from human lung tissue and to study their in vitro properties. METHODS MSC were cultured from lung tissue obtained from patients with fibrotic lung diseases (n = 17), from emphysema (n = 12), and normal lungs (n = 3). Immunofluorescenc...

stem cell-based therapy has great potential in treating health conditions including cardiovascular, autoimmune, type i diabetes, neurodegenerative and bone and cartilage diseases also in spinal cord injuries, malformations and cancer. in addition to their potential use to treat systemic diseases, stem cell-based therapy also provides a powerful tool to treat oral and dental diseases such as cra...

Bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) gene delivery has shown to induce bone formation in vivo in cell-based tissue engineering. In addition, the chemoattractant stromal cell-derived factor-1α (SDF-1α, also known as CXCL12) is known to recruit multipotent stromal cells towards its release site where it enhances vascularisation and possibly contributes to osteogenic differentiation. To investigat...

We have studied a rapid cultivation method for human mesenchymal stromal cells based on CellGroTM medium and human serum, supplemented with insulin, ascorbic acid, dexamethasone, epidermal growth factor, platelet-derived growth factor BB, macrophage colony-stimulating factor and fibroblast growth factor 2. This study has shown that ...

Driving specific differentiation pathways in multipotent stem cells is a main goal of cell therapy. Here we exploited the differentiating potential of Xenopus animal cap embryonic stem (ACES) cells to investigate the factors necessary to drive multipotent stem cells toward retinal fates. ACES cells are multipotent, and can be diverged from their default ectodermal fate to give rise to cell type...

RATIONALE Vascular calcification is a regulated process that involves osteoprogenitor cells and frequently complicates common vascular disease, such as atherosclerosis and diabetic vasculopathy. However, it is not clear whether the vascular endothelium has a role in contributing osteoprogenitor cells to the calcific lesions. OBJECTIVE To determine whether the vascular endothelium contributes ...

MEP21 is an avian antigen specifically expressed on the surface of Myb-Ets-transformed multipotent hematopoietic precursors (MEPs) and of normal thrombocytes. Using nanoelectrospray tandem mass spectrometry, we have sequenced and subsequently cloned the MEP21 cDNA and named the gene thrombomucin as it encodes a 571-amino acid protein with an extracellular domain typical of the mucin family of p...

Neural stem cells have been documented in both the developing and the mature adult CNSs of mammals. This cell population holds a considerable promise for therapeutical applications in a wide array of CNS diseases. Therefore, universally applicable strategies for the purification of this population to further its cell biological characterization are sought. Here, we report that the unique chondr...

Despite progresses in identifying the cellular mechanisms at the basis of the differentiation of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, little is known about the regulatory circuitry at the basis of lineage commitment of hematopoietic multipotent progenitors. To address this issue, we propose a computational approach to give further insights in the comprehension of this genetic mechanism. Differe...

Experimental results accumulated during last decade suggest that human perinatal tissues such as placenta, fetal membranes, and umbilical cord, as well as perinatal fluids such as, amniotic fluid and umbilical cord blood, harbour different amounts of multipotent precursor cells, called extra-embryonic mesenchymal stem cells (EE-MSCs). Perinatal EE-MSCs represent an intermediate cell type betwee...