Abstract
Adult bone marrow contains endothelial cells, adipocytes, stromal cells, and blood cells, such as erythrocytes, lymphocytes, platelets. Stromal cells are a population of multipotent cells referred to as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which not only support hematopoiesis, but also differentiate into multiple lineages, including fat, bone and cartilage. Because of this multipotency, MSCs are an attractive candidate for clinical application to promote repair or regeneration of damaged tissues of mesenchymal origin. However, the characteristics of bone marrow MSCs are still unclear, because of the lack of suitable markers for their prospective isolation. Here, we report the potential usefulness of CD271 (low-affinity nerve growth factor receptor: LNGFR) and CD133 (prominin1: AC133), as markers of the MSC population, for the prospective isolation of highly purified MSCs. This isolation method may provide hope for improving the starting population of stem cells for transplantation in diseases like spinal cord injury, cartilage repair and myocardial infarction.
