Prospective isolation and identification of human mesenchymal stem cells by flow cytometry

Abstract

Department of Dentistry and Oral Surgery, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan Adult bone marrow contains endothelial cells, adipocytes, stromal cells, and blood cells, such as erythro-cytes, lymphocytes, platelets. Stromal cells are a population of multipotent cells referred to as mesenchymalstem cells (MSCs), which not only support hematopoiesis, but also differentiate into multiple lineages, in-cluding fat, bone and cartilage. Because of this multipotency, MSCs are an attractive candidate for clinicalapplication to promote repair or regeneration of damaged tissues of mesenchymal origin. However, thecharacteristics of bone marrow MSCs are still unclear, because of the lack of suitable markers for theirprospective isolation. Here, we report the potential usefulness of CD271 (low-affinity nerve growth factorreceptor: LNGFR) and CD133 (prominin1: AC133), as markers of the MSC population, for the prospectiveisolation of highly purified MSCs. This isolation method may provide hope for improving the starting populationof stem cells for transplantation in diseases like spinal cord injury, cartilage repair and myocardial infarction.Rec.10/9/2008, Acc.11/21/2008, pp73-78