Mesenchymal Stem Cell
A type of adult stem cell found in bone marrow, fat tissue, and other sources that can differentiate into bone, cartilage, muscle, and fat cells. Mesenchymal stem cells are investigated for regenerative medicine applications and their response to growth factors relevant to peptide-based tissue repair research.
Technical Context
MSCs (also called mesenchymal stromal cells) are defined by the ISCT criteria: plastic-adherent under standard culture conditions, express CD73, CD90, CD105 (and lack CD45, CD34, CD14, CD11b, CD19, CD79a, HLA-DR), and can differentiate into osteoblasts, adipocytes, and chondroblasts in vitro. MSCs reside in: bone marrow (most studied), adipose tissue (most abundant, easily harvested), umbilical cord/Wharton's jelly, dental pulp, and periosteum. Beyond differentiation capacity, MSCs exert paracrine effects: secreting anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL-10, TGF-β), growth factors (VEGF, HGF, IGF-1), and extracellular vesicles (containing mRNA, miRNA, proteins). These paracrine effects underlie most of MSCs' therapeutic potential — they modulate immune responses and promote tissue repair without necessarily differentiating into new tissue cells. MSC-based therapies for tissue repair are an active area of clinical research, intersecting with peptide growth factor biology.