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Cell & Gene Therapy

MSCs - Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are rare progenitor cells most commonly found in bone marrow. MSCs either divide as undifferentiated cells or differentiate into bone, cartilage, fat, muscle, tendon and marrow stroma. They are most frequently isolated from bone marrow, but they can be isolated from other tissues including adipose tissue and dental pulp. All three types have been reported to be multipotent, meaning that they can differentiate down many different lineages including chondrogenic, osteogenic, adipogenic and neural1. Learn more about cryopreserved bone marrow-, adipose- and dental pulp-derived MSCs, with specialized growth and differentiation media and reagents for optimum cell performance.

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Bone marrow MSCs  Adipose MSCs Dental pulp-derived MSCs
Cells  Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells (hMSC)  Human Adipose-Derived Stem Cells (hADSC)  Human Dental Pulp Stem Cells
Research-grade media    MSCGM Mesenchymal Stem Cell Growth Medium BulletKit®   AdSC growth medium  Dental Pulp Stem Cell BulletKit
GMP media   Therapeak MSCGM

Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell (hMSC) Differentiation Media series: Stem cells possess the unique ability to differentiate into multiple lineages of cells.  Our suite of research grade media support differentiation of MSCs down the adipogenic path with hMSC Adipogenic Differentiation Medium, chondrogenic path with (hMSC Chondrocyte Differentiation Medium), and osteogenic (hMSC Osteogenic Differentiation Medium).

Learn more on culturing  human mesenchymal stem cells.
 

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Adult mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are an attractive therapeutic agent for the treatment of various diseases, due to three main characteristics:

  1. They can self-renew while differentiating across various lineages, including chondrogenic (cartilage), osteogenic (bone), and adipogenic (fat) lineages, leading to applications in regenerative medicine and tissue repair.
  2. They can migrate to specific sites of inflammation and exert potent immunosuppressive and anti-inflammatory effects. This usually occurs via interactions between lymphocytes associated with both the innate and adaptive immune system. 
  3. They can also be easily accessed and expanded in vitro. 


These characteristics mean that MSCs have important applications in cell differentiation and gene regulation, gene therapy and transplantation, and cell-based screening assays such as those used in pre-clinical drug discovery.

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Due to their multilineage and proliferative potential, in vitro culture of MSCs allows you to easily generate a variety of different physiologically relevant cells for use in your research. This also provides a valuable method to study patterns of gene regulation and/or function during differentiation, which is not yet well understood. MSCS are being studied as  potentially promising treatment for myocardial infarction, as well as GVHD, SLE and MS. In animal models, BM-MSCs have been studied in the context of autoimmune encephalomyelitis, asthma, allergic rhinitis, pulmonary fibrosis and peripheral nerve regeneration.


Learn more  on how to use a 3D Bioprinted Model to Study Osteogenic Differentiation of Primary Mesenchymal Stem Cells.

A 3D Bioprinted Model to Study Osteogenic Differentiation of Primary Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Learn from this white paper how a 3D bioprinted model using hMSCs can be used for evaluation of bioink compatibility and bioprinting processes. Download Document

Genetic modification of MSCs is emerging as a promising immunotherapy. Genes of interest can be easily introduced into MSCs via viral and non-viral transfection methods to enable transgene expression. Transplantation of genetically modified, tissue-specific MSCs into patients can exert immunosuppressive effects or reinforce the immune process through the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines.2  MSC-based immunotherapy is already showing great promise in treating a variety of diseases, including a range of cancers.3 

Download the protocol on transfection of human mesenchymal cells with Nucleofector® Technology: 4D-Nucleofector® Protocol for Undifferentiated Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells.

MSCs as Drug Delivery Vehicles

Cell-based screening assays

The self-renewal ability of MSCs means that they can be used to generate large numbers of cells, which is an essential requirement for cell-based screening assays. The scalability of MSC-based assays means that they can be used in a variety of screening applications, ranging from screening biomolecules against known targets to identifying potential targets. MSC-based screening assays have a key advantage over using cell lines. Cell lines can yield inconsistent results, because some drug targets may only be expressed at certain time points during lineage differentiation. As such, using primary MSC-based screening assays allows identification of small molecules through the various stages of the differentiation process.

Using mesenchymal stem cells for therapies

Learn more the therapeutic properties of MSCs, quality attributes, expansion methods, as well as some major challenges these cells create when used in cell therapy applications.
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TheraPEAK® MSCGM® Mesenchymal Stem Cell Growth Medium

Discover our serum-free, GMP medium for xeno-free culture of undifferentiated MSCs, without the use of an attachment matrix.
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References

Jorgensen C et al. Engineering mesenchymal stem cells for immunotherapy. Gene Therapy 2003.10, 928–931

Kim N and Cho SG. Clinical applications of mesenchymal stem cells. Korean J Intern Med. 2013 Jul; 28(4): 387–402.

Mohammadi et al. Mesenchymal stem cell: a new horizon in cancer gene therapy. Cancer Gene Therapy 2016 23, 285–286