Mesenchymal Stem Cells - the "Magic Bullet"?
Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) are a heterogeneous population of cells which are primarily found in the bone marrow (and fat pads) and are recruited at site of injury and are known to participate in the healing and repair of almost all tissues within the human anatomy. MSCs are pluripotent and can differentiate in osteogenic, chondrogenic, adipogenic and fibroblastic lineages. There is increasing evidence that MSCs might be the "real" resident stem cells. MSCs also home in to tumors are participate in tumor development. In spite of decades of research highlighting the importance of MSCs our understanding of what constitutes a MSC niche is very limited and the factors that influence the heterogeneity of the MSC population is not well understood. We are interested in understanding the role of "heterogeneity" in MSC pluripotency and developing systems that can mimic the natural niche of MSC and in doing so develop synthetic platform for MSC self-renewal and transplantation.
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Copyright - Shastrilab, All Rights Reserved