Potential Applications of Umbilical Cord Lining Stem Cells

Potential Therapeutic Application

Source	Umbilical cord lining
Types of stem cells	Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)	Epithelial stem cells (EpSCs)
Potential Treatment for	Tissue repair Myocardial infarction (heart muscle repair) Osteoarthiritis (cartilage repair and other orthopedic applications) Stroke Pulmonary fibrosis HSCs engraftment support Shorten time of engraftment Reduce immune system complications Immune modulation Type 1 diabetes Crohn's disease Graft versus host disease (GvHD)	Wounds/soft tissue repair Surface ulcers (e.g. diabetic ulcers) Various types of burns Tissue trauma Lining of liver Replacement of corneal membrane

Today, more than 700 clinical trials¹ are on-going worldwide to uncover the potential of MSCs. Thus far, encouraging results have been published; stem cell treatments have been proven safe and capable of repairing damage caused by stroke and heart disease. MSCs have also been used in combination with HSCs as a dual therapy to promote faster engraftment of HSCs and to reduce immune system complications².

Although there is evidence that MSCs can be changed to certain types of Epithelial cells, the cells cannot be changed into Epithelial stem cells (EpSCs). The difference between Epithelial stem cells and Epithelial cells is that Epithelial stem cells can differentiate into all different epithelial cell types such as skin, cornea, lining of the gut, etc. on demand. Whereas, (non-stem) Epithelial cells have already reached terminal differentiation so the cells cannot be further changed into different Epithelial cell types when needed. Thus, MSCs and EpSCs cannot be replaced by each other.