Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) differentiate into fat, cartilage and bone tissue. At present, reliable markers to predict stem cell properties of MSC do not exist. Oftentimes, the expression of “stemness” markers, like POU5F1, are used for this purpose. Here, I show that the expression of POU5F1, does not predict stem-cell like behaviour of MSC, since 89% of POU5F1 transcripts correspond to pseudogenes and not the parental gene. In order to identify alternative predictors for the prospective isolation of MSCs, I compared the gene expression of in vivo bone-forming MSC with umbilical vein stromal cells. This study identified several possible surface markers, for example NOTCH3 and ITGA11, which could be useful to isolate multipotent MSC. Hence, my experiments identified subsets of MSC which may facilitate the study of cell fate determination in MSC and the development of more homogeneous cell populations for mesenchymal cell therapy.
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Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) differentiate into fat, cartilage and bone tissue. At present, reliable markers to predict stem cell properties of MSC do not exist. Oftentimes, the expression of “stemness” markers, like POU5F1, are used for this purpose. Here, I show that the expression of POU5F1, does not predict stem-cell like behaviour of MSC, since 89% of POU5F1 transcripts correspond to pseudogenes and not the parental gene. In order to identify alternative predictors for the prospective isola...
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