Are umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells advantageous over bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells for cell therapy in orthopedics?
Mesenchymal Stem cells (MSC) from umbilical cords (UC) are of increasing interest for cell therapy in degenerative musculoskeletal disorders as they present little ethical consideration and are reported to contain immune privileged cells, which may be suitable for allogeneic based therapies. The use of MSCs as allogeneic cells in vivo would only be possible if they retained their immune privileged properties in an inflammatory environment. We have previously shown that cells obtained from UC are multipotent and have the recommended MSC cell surface marker profile according to the International Society for Cellular Therapy.