Content area
Full Text
articlesPluripotency of mesenchymal stem cells
derived from adult marrowYuehua Jiang*, Balkrishna N. Jahagirdar*, R. Lee Reinhardt, Robert E. Schwartz*, C. Dirk Keenek, Xilma R. Ortiz-Gonzalezk,
Morayma Reyes*, Todd Lenvik*, Troy Lund*, Mark Blackstad*, Jingbo Du*, Sara Aldrich*, Aaron Lisberg*, Walter C. Lowk,David A. Largaespada{ & Catherine M. Verfaillie** Stem Cell Institute, Division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation, Department of Medicine, Department of Microbiology, Center for
Immunology, k Department of Neurosurgery, and { Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis,
Minnesota 55455, USA These authors contributed equally to this work...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................We report here that cells co-purifying with mesenchymal stem cellstermed here multipotent adult progenitor cells or MAPCs
differentiate, at the single cell level, not only into mesenchymal cells, but also cells with visceral mesoderm, neuroectoderm and
endoderm characteristics in vitro. When injected into an early blastocyst, single MAPCs contribute to most, if not all, somatic cell
types. On transplantation into a non-irradiated host, MAPCs engraft and differentiate to the haematopoietic lineage, in addition to
the epithelium of liver, lung and gut. Engraftment in the haematopoietic system as well as the gastrointestinal tract is increased
when MAPCs are transplanted in a minimally irradiated host. As MAPCs proliferate extensively without obvious senescence or loss
of differentiation potential, they may be an ideal cell source for therapy of inherited or degenerative diseases.Embryonic stem (ES) cells are pluripotent cells derived from the
inner cell mass of the blastocyst that can be propagated indefinitely
in an undifferentiated state. ES cells differentiate to all cell lineages
in vivo and differentiate into many cell types in vitro. Although ES
cells have been isolated from humans1, their use in research as well as
therapeutics is encumbered by ethical considerations2. Stem cells
also exist for most tissues, including haematopoietic3, neural4,
gastrointestinal5, epidermal6, hepatic7 and mesenchymal stem
cells8. Compared with ES cells, tissue-specific stem cells have less
self-renewal ability and, although they differentiate into multiple
lineages, they are not pluripotent.Until recently, it was thought that tissue-specific stem cells could
only differentiate into cells of the tissue of origin; however, recent
studies suggested that tissue-specific stem cells can differentiate into
lineages other than the tissue of origin. After transplantation of
bone marrow or enriched haematopoietic stem cells (HSC), skeletal
myoblasts9,10, cardiac myoblasts11,12,...