background: mesenchymal stem cells (msc) are a very promising transplantable stem cell source for a variety of cell replacement therapies. as the main source of msc is bone marrow (bm), most of studies have been done on bm-derived msc (bm-msc). umbilical cord (uc)-derived msc (uc-msc) which are recently introduced, is one of the good alternative source for these cells. the objective of this stu...

The development of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) is considered a turning point in tissue engineering. However, more data are required to improve understanding of key aspects of the cell differentiation process, including how specific chondrogenic processes affect the gene expression profile of chondrocyte‑like cells and the relative value of cell differentiation markers. The mai...

Articular cartilage, the load-bearing tissue of the joint, has limited repair and regeneration ability. The scarcity of treatment modalities for large chondral defects has motivated researchers to engineer cartilage tissue constructs that can meet the functional demands of this tissue in vivo. Cartilage tissue engineering requires 3 components: cells, scaffold, and environment. ...

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 regeneration ha...

Use of Adipose Stem Cells (ADSCs), obtained easily in a relatively less invasive manner (abdominoplasty) and characterized by flow cytometry, is a classical approach in stem cell research and clinical aspects. Other techniques such as isolation of the cells from bone marrow aspirates  (1) are rather more invasive. Further, it is pertinent to point out that growth rate, differentiatio...

Liver injury modulates local microenvironment, triggering production of signals that instruct stem cell fate choices. In this study, we employed a microfluidic co-culture system to recreate important interactions in the liver stem cell niche, those between adult hepatocytes and liver progenitor cells (LPCs). We demonstrate that pluripotent stem cell-derived LPCs choose hepatic fate when culture...

BACKGROUND The recent breakthrough in the generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are almost indistinguishable from embryonic stem (ES) cells, facilitates the generation of murine disease- and human patient-specific stem cell lines. The aim of this study was to characterize the cardiac differentiation potential of a murine iPS cell clone in comparison to a well-established mur...

A variety of embryonic and adult stem cell lines require an initial co-culturing with feeder cells for non-differentiated growth, self renewal and maintenance of pluripotency. However for many downstream ES cell applications the feeder cells have to be considered contaminations that might interfere not just with the analysis of experimental data but also with clinical application and tissue eng...

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) offer the potential to generate large numbers of functional cardiomyocytes from clonal and patient-specific cell sources. Here we show that temporal modulation of Wnt signaling is both essential and sufficient for efficient cardiac induction in hPSCs under defined, growth factor-free conditions. shRNA knockdown of β-catenin during the initial stage of hPSC d...