Human Synovium-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells: Ex Vivo Analysis.

Synovium-derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) have been shown to have superior features in comparison with MSCs from other tissue sources. As they are far less recognised compared to bone marrow- or adipose tissue-derived MSCs, I provide here a detailed procedure on how to isolate MSCs from human synovium. This includes determination of the proportions of viable cells in ex vivo isolated fractions before the seeding of the cells and a description of how to carry out colony-forming fibroblast assays to quantify the clonogenicity of these cells.