Mesenchymal stem cells isolated from different sources differentiate into vascular endothelial cells under induction

BACKGROUND: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can be differentiated into vascular endothelial cells to construct ideal blood vessel grafts in vitro that have wide prospective utility in the clinical treatment of ischemic diseases, vascular engineering and regeneration medicine. OBJECTIVE: To review the recent research progress and related issue in biological characteristics of MSCs as well as differentiation of MSCs isolated from different sources into vascular endothelial cells. METHODS: The first authors retrieved PubMed, Sciencedirect and Medline databases for relevant articles published from January 2000 to June 2015. The key words were “mesenchymal stem cells; vascular endothelial cell; cell differentiation” in English. Initially, 156 articles were retrieved, and finally 51 articles were included in result analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The MSCs sources are abundant. The research about bone marrow-derived MSCs is the earliest and maximum, but with the increasing donor age, their proliferation and differentiation ability decreases. MSCs from umbilical cord, placenta and amniotic membrane are easy to obtain, and meanwhile both neonatal and maternal does not feel any pain and psychological burden. Given these, these cells are more acceptable for recipients, and there are no ethical, moral and legal disputes. MSCs from the umbilical cord blood are abundant with weak cell immunogenicity and low viral and bacterial contamination probability. However, the clinical application of amniotic fluid marrow-derived MSCs is limited because of its sampling methods.