Characterization of mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord and Wharton’s jelly in comparison to bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are capable of differentiating into different mesenchymal lineages, including adipose tissue, bone and cartilage. For clinical use, adult bone marrow is the most common source of MSCs. However, the frequency and differentiating capacity of MSCs in adult bone marrow decrease with age of donors. Different post-natal tissues have been studied for the presence of MSCs. However, there is no report about the characteristic of MSCs isolated from those sources in comparison to MSCs isolated from bone marrow. This study comprehensively compared several characteristics of MSCs isolated from umbilical cord, Wharton’s jelly and bone marrow in aspects of cell morphology, immunophenotype and growth kinetics as well as the differentiation capacity to be adipogenic and osteogenic lineages. We successfully isolated MSCs from umbilical cord and Wharton’s jelly, as well as bone marrow. Our results indicated that MSCs isolated from those three sources have fibroblast-like morphology and exhibited similar cell surface markers including CD73, CD90, and CD105. Umbilical cord and Wharton’s jelly derived MSCs cultured in NH OsteoDiff Medium and NH AdipoDiff Medium showed the ability to differentiate to be osteocytes and adipocytes in a comparable degree to bone marrow derived MSCs. Moreover, the proliferation capacity of MSCs isolated from umbilical cord and Wharton’s jelly at passage 2 to 4 was significantly higher than bone marrow derived MSCs (p \< 0.05). The results obtained from this study indicated that MSCs isolated from umbilical cord and Wharton’s jelly had similar characteristic in comparison to bone marrow derived MSCs. Therefore, post-natal tissues, especially umbilical cord and Wharton’s jelly, are attractive alternative sources of MSCs for future clinical application.