Advances in the application of nucleus pulposus stem cells in nucleus pulposus tissue engineering / 中华骨科杂志

ABSTRACT

Intervertebral disc degeneration (IVDD) takes great affection on people health all over the world.With the extension of human life and aging,the number of sick people will grow rapidly.At present,both conservative and surgical treatment can only alleviate the symptoms,rather than the fundamental treatment for the process of degeneration.Therefore,the application of cell therapy in the treatment of degenerative disc regeneration is an innovative treatment.However,it's a great bottleneck for exogenous transplanted stem cells to survive in degenerated intervertebral disc with harsh environment containing strong force,acidic pH,hypoxia,hyperosmolarity and limited nutrition.In recent years,tissue endogenous repair has been demonstrated to be present in almost all human tissues,and endogenous stem cell play an important role in the process.Similarly,nucleus pulposus was also confirmed the existence of such a kind of tissue specific stem cells-nucleus pulposus derived stem cells (NPSCs)-a new promising candidate for the treatment of IVDD.NPSCs,as a new kind of stem cells,hold either the characteristic of stem cell and the special potential of themselves,such as the nice adaption of the environment in intervertebral disc and the superior potential of cartilage differentiation.Nonetheless,the isolations of NPSCs were different;cell phenotypes were lack of wildly acceptable standard and the biological characteristics were various among different NP sources.In addition,whether the application of NPSCs could be used in nucleus pulposus tissue engineering still calls for further research.Due to the unclear in degeneration mechanism of IVDD,the study on degeneration mechanism of NPSCs may play a great important role in clarifying this issue.