[Prospects of Research on Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells]

Besides hematopoietic stem cells, bone marrow also contains another type of stem cells called mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). With different induced conditions, MSCs have the ability to differentiate into a variety of nonhematopoietic tissue cells, including osteoblasts, chondroblast, adipocytes, myoblasts, astrocytes, and so on. MSCs can be readily obtained from bone marrow by their adhesion to plastic and expansion in culture. Also they can be genetically engineered by transduced target genes. MSCs may be the farget cells for both cell therapy and gene therapy for diseases derived from many different nonhematopoietic tissues.