Abstract
Author(s): Pedro Silva Couto*
The discussion around stem cell therapies has been arousing the attention of scientific and medical community. In the particular case of mesenchymal stem/stromal cells their immunomodulatory properties as well as multilineage differentiation ability might be important to target conditions such as graft-versus-host disease, Chron’s disease, bone and cartilage regeneration and even myocardial regeneration. Recognizing that potential, stem cells banks from all over the world are storing MSC from umbilical cord which has several advantages over other sources of MSC namely adult ones such as bone marrow or adipose tissue. The aim of this review is to focus the MSC isolation processes from UCM from a stem cell bank perspective. Since the isolation is only the first step of a cell therapy, this review also offers an integrated perspective focusing also expansion, quality control, clinical trials and actual legal framework around MSC isolation in stem cell bank’s context.