Mesenchymal stem cells

A mesenchymal stem cell — MSC for short — is a cell found in the connective tissue that runs through almost every organ. They sit in small numbers alongside blood vessels, in bone marrow, in fat, and in the tissue of the umbilical cord.

MSCs are described as multipotent, which means one MSC can mature into more than one kind of cell — bone, cartilage and fat cells among them. In the body, though, that is not their main day job.

The great majority of what an MSC does, it does by talking. It releases a continuous mixture of proteins — growth factors, cytokines and other signalling molecules — into the fluid around it. Those molecules bind to receptors on nearby cells and change their behaviour.

Through that signalling, MSCs take part in how the body regulates inflammation, how new blood vessels are laid down, and how tissue is remodelled after it has been disturbed. Researchers often call this the paracrine effect: an effect on the neighbours, produced by secretion rather than by the cell itself becoming new tissue.

MSCs also carry relatively few of the surface markers the immune system uses to tell self from non-self, which is why they are studied so heavily in laboratory work.

Every mesenchymal line RediCell supplies is isolated from Wharton’s jelly — the gelatinous connective tissue inside the umbilical cord — donated with consent after a scheduled caesarean birth.

Mesenchymal batches are characterised by flow cytometry for CD73, CD90 and CD105, and for the absence of CD34, CD45 and HLA-DR — the standard identity panel for this cell type.