Are pluripotent stem cells present in the bone marrow?
It has been proposed that a heterogeneous population of non-hematopoietic stem cells exists in the bone marrow of both humans and rodents, with MSCs being just a subset of this complex cellular make-up. The heterogeneity is exemplified by the different cell pools investigators over the years have isolated from the bone marrow using different methodology, and by the different names that have been assigned to these diverse populations, such as “endothelial progenitor cells” (EPCs), “multipotent adult progenitor cells” (MAPCs) or “marrow-isolated adult mutilineage inducible cells” (MIAMI), “mesenchymal stem cells” (MSCs), and ” very small embryonic-like stem cells” (VSELs; Asahara et al. 1999, Jiang et al. 2002, Reyes et al. 2001, D’ippolito et al. 2004, Ratajczak et al. 2007). EPCs have been isolated in both mice and humans, and are considered endothelial precursors that reside in the bone marrow and are released into the bloodstream to contribute to vasculogenesis in injured organs (Asa
