Stem cells isolated from human dental pulp and amniotic fluid improve skeletal muscle histopathology in mdx/SCID mice

Introduction Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), caused by a lack of the functional structural protein dystrophin, leads to severe muscle degeneration where the patients are typically wheelchair-bound and die in their mid-twenties from cardiac or respiratory failure or both. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of human dental pulp stem cells (hDPSCs) and human amniotic fluid stem cells (hAFSCs) to differentiate toward a skeletal myogenic lineage using several different protocols in order to determine the optimal conditions for achieving myogenic commitment and to subsequently evaluate their contribution in the improvement of the pathological features associated with dystrophic skeletal muscle when intramuscularly injected into mdx/SCID mice, an immune-compromised animal model of DMD.