ABSTRACT
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are promising candidates to develop new cell-based therapeutic strategies and bone marrow represents the main source of MSCs for experimental and clinical application currently. How to obtain enough MSCs is the biggest challenge faced by the experimental and clinical application. The difference of morphology, growth pattern, immunophenotype and multilineage differentiation of MSCs derived from human umbilical cord vein and their multiple differentiation capacity were investigated. The results showed that MSCs derived from human umbilical cord vein and normal adult bone marrow were similar in biological characteristics. They not only grew in fibroblast-like cells mode but had great expansion potency and multilineage differentiation ability in vitro. The MSCs derived from human umbilical cord vein may be an excellent alternative source for experimental and clinical application.