Human mesenchymal stem cells (HMSCS) possess three properties of great interest for the development of cell therapies and tissue engineering: multilineage differentiation, immunomodulation, and production of trophic factors. Efficient ex vivo expansion of hMSCs is a challenging requirement for large scale production of clinical grade cells. Low-cost, robust, scalable culture methods using chemi...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of diseases that seriously affect elderly people's quality of life. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) offer a potential promise for the joint repair in OA patients. However, chondrogenic differentiation from hMSCs in vitro takes a long time (∼ 6 weeks) and differentiated cells are still not as functionally mature as primary isolated chondrocytes, though chemical st...

Human multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (hMSCs) possess the ability to differentiate into osteoblasts, and they can be utilized as a source for bone regenerative therapy. Osteoinductive pretreatment, which induces the osteoblastic differentiation of hMSCs in vitro, has been widely used for bone tissue engineering prior to cell transplantation. However, the molecular basis of osteoblastic di...

Electrical stimulation (ES) can activate diverse biostimulatory responses in a range of tissues. Of various forms of ES, the application of biphasic electric current (BEC) is a new approach to bone formation. This study is to investigate the effects and mechanism of action of BEC in osteoblast differentiation and cytokine production in human mesenchymal stromal cells (hMSCs). Using an in vitro ...

Biodistribution and fate of transplanted stem cells via longitudinal monitoring has been successfully achieved in the last decade using optical imaging. However, sensitive longitudinal imaging of transplanted stem cells in deep tissue like the brain remains challenging not only due to low light penetration but because of other factors such as low or inferior expression levels of optical reporte...

Heart transplantation remains the only curative treatment for end-stage heart failure. This life-saving option continues to be limited by low number of organ donors, graft rejection and adverse effects immunosuppressants. Engineering bioartificial hearts from acellular native-derived scaffolds stem cells has gained attention because its potential overcome these limitations. In this study, rat (...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are bone marrow stroma-derived cells, which can differentiate into several types of mesenchymal tissues. Although regarded as tissue-specific stem cells, human MSCs (hMSCs) have a low proliferative ability with a finite life span, which is a hurdle to further analysis of their biology. Here we attempted to establish immortalized hMSCs by retrovirus-mediated gene tr...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by motor neuron loss. Although the underlying cause of the disease remains unclear, a variety of pathogenic mechanisms have been proposed. Despite promising preclinical studies showing the modification of the disease progression, most trials have failed to demonstrate any significant improvement in outc...

Abnormalities of membranous and endochondral ossification in patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) remain incompletely understood. To investigate abnormalities in the melatonin signaling pathway and cellular response to melatonin in AIS, a case‑control study of osteogenic and chondrogenic differentiation was performed using human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs). AIS was diagnosed b...

Nonunion fractures can cause severe dysfunction and are often difficult to treat mainly due to a poor understanding of their physiopathology. Although many aspects of impaired fracture healing have been extensively studied, little is known about the cellular and molecular mechanisms leading to atrophic nonunion. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to assess the pools and biological func...