Prospects of the Use of Mesenchymal and Neuromesenchymal Stem Cells

Mesenchymal stem cells, MSCs, were identified in the 1960s. Recently, these cells have attracted great attention from researchers because their clinical applications look rather promising. At present, MSCs are most frequently interpreted as multipotent cells characterized by fibroblast-like morphology and capable of proliferating. These are non-differentiated cells possessing a great potential for differentiation and formation of tissues of different types, including the bone, cartilage, and muscle tissues, and also of the bone marrow stroma. In accessible publications, there is information that extremely wide plasticity is typical of MSCs obtained from the bone marrow; these cells can serve as originating units for the nerve tissue, hepatocytes, cardiomyocytes, and epithelial cells of the lungs. In this review, we describe results of recent studies in the field of fundamental biology of MSCs separated from different sources, their identification, potential for differentiation, and possibilities for therapeutic use.