Chapter 19 – Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Bone marrow (BM) was the first tissue described as a source of plastic-adherent, fibroblast-like cells that develops colony-forming unit fibroblasts (CFU-F) when seeded in tissue culture plates. These cells, originally designated stromal cells, elicited much attention, and the main goal of thousands of studies conducted with these cells was to find an ultimate pure cell population that could be further utilized for regenerative purposes. In these studies, cells were isolated using several methods that will be discussed later in this chapter and were given names such as MSCs (mesenchymal stem cells), mesenchymal progenitors, stromal stem cells, among others. Lately, a committee of the International Society for Cytotherapy suggested the name ‘multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells.’ However, most scientists refer to them simply as ‘MSCs.’