Chemical Coaxing of Mesenchymal Stromal Cells by Drug Repositioning for Nestin Induction.

Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) display heterogeneity in origin and functional role in tissue homeostasis. Subsets of MSCs derived from the neural crest express nestin and serve as niches in bone marrow, but the possibility of coaxing MSCs into nestin-expresing cells for enhanced supportive activity is unclear. In this study, as an approach to the chemical coaxing of MSC functions, we screened libraries of clinically approved chemicals to identify compounds capable of inducing nestin expression in MSCs.

iPSC-Derived MSCs Are a Distinct Entity of MSCs with Higher Therapeutic Potential than Their Donor-Matched Parental MSCs.

Mesenchymal stromal cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iMSCs) have been proposed as alternative sources of primary MSCs with various advantages for cell therapeutic trials. However, precise evaluation of the differences between iMSCs and primary MSCs is lacking due to individual variations in the donor cells, which obscure direct comparisons between the two. In this study, we generated donor-matched iMSCs from individual bone marrow-derived MSCs and directly compared their cell-autonomous and paracrine therapeutic effects.

Nasal Turbinate Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Preserve Characteristics of Their Neural Crest Origin and Exert Distinct Paracrine Activity.

The sources of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) for cell therapy trials are expanding, increasing the need for their characterization. Here, we characterized multi-donor, turbinate-derived MSCs (TB-MSCs) that develop from the neural crest, and compared them to bone marrow-derived MSCs (BM-MSCs). TB-MSCs had higher proliferation potential and higher self-renewal of colony forming cells, but lower potential for multi-lineage differentiation than BM-MSCs.