Using by-product tissues as stem cell sources

Attila Csordas — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 19:01:35 -0800

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I call by-product human tissues the ones that are not needed for the human body after filling their essential function in the body, like menstrual blood, amniotic fluid, placenta and umbilical cord blood. It is a somewhat very positive idea that these human tissues previously considered as waste products, the placenta (1) the umbilical cord (2) are radically reinterpreted as valuable sources of prospective therapies due to the current results of stem cell research and regenerative medicine.

Exactly this reinterpretation is taking place now with the cells of the regularly produced menstrual blood flow as the first commercially available menstrual stem cell service (managed through Fedex), C’elle was launched by cord blood banker Cryo-Cell.

According to a freshly published article (3): "Angiogenesis is a critical component of the proliferative endometrial phase of the menstrual cycle. Thus, we hypothesized that a stem cell-like population exist and can be isolated from menstrual blood. Mononuclear cells collected from the menstrual blood contained a subpopulation of adherent cells which could be maintained in tissue culture for >68 doublings. and retained expression of the markers CD9, CD29, CD41a, CD44, CD59, CD73, CD90 and CD105, without karyotypic abnormalities. Proliferative rate of the cells was significantly higher than control umbilical cord derived mesenchymal stem cells, with doubling occurring every 19.4 hours. These cells, which we termed "Endometrial Regenerative Cells" (ERC) were capable of differentiating into 9 lineages: cadiomyocytic, respiratory epithelial, neurocytic, myocytic, endothelial, pancreatic, hepatic, adipocytic, and osteogenic. Additionally, ERC produced MMP3, MMP10, GM-CSF, angiopoietin-2 and PDGF-BB at 10-100,000 fold higher levels than two control cord blood derived mesenchymal stem cell lines. Given the ease of extraction and pluripotency of this cell population, we propose ERC as a novel alternative to current stem cells sources."

So the characteristics of these menstrual stromal cells could easily be compared to the more established mesenchymal stromal cells from the bone marrow but their collection is non-invasive and pain free I’d like to highlight 2 differences: the menstrual derived cells express embryonic like cell surface markers like SSEA and Oct4 (warning: maybe Oct4 is not important for self-renewal and maintenance of somatic stem cells at all) compared to the mesenchymal cells, while the mesenchymal stromal cells are better in their immunological properties as in some cases they are even able to suppress immunological reactions, while the menstrual cells said to be demonstrated a weak stimulatory response which suggests potential use in first-degree relatives (if the source is the mother, it is probably no good for the father) but not in distant relatives.

The professional jargon would rather call those cells stromal cells as they are not adult stem cells in the sense of being in the adult organism throughout the life and retaining some renewing capacity.

What are the implications of this work?

the collection and storing of by-product tissues as stem cell sources can easily be commercialized and opens up a big marketplace in biotech;
The recycling of by-product tissue as stem cell sources can become the strong rivals of embryonic or adult somatic stem cells concerning future regenerative medicine therapies;
The recycling of by-product tissue as stem cell sources is ethically uncontroversial compared to embryonic stem cells.

Peer review literature

1. Miki et al. Stem Cell Characteristics of Amniotic Epithelial Cells Stem Cells Vol. 23 No. 10 November 2005, pp. 1549 -1559 http://stemcells.alphamedpress.org/cgi/content/short/23/10/1549
2. Secco et al.: Multipotent Stem Cells from Umbilical Cord: Cord is Richer than Blood! Stem Cells. 2007 Oct 11
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17932423&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubm...
3. Meng et al. Endometrial regenerative cells: A novel stem cell population Journal of Translational Medicine 2007, 5:57doi:10.1186/1479-5876-5-57 http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/5/1/57

Blog:

Pimm: Collect and FedEx menstrual stem cells with the C’elle kit: the next flow
http://pimm.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/collect-and-fedex-menstrual-stem-cells-with-the-celle-kit-the-next-flow/

placenta

Using by-product tissues as stem cell sources

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