Umbilical cord blood stem cells.

The umbilical cord contains a rich source of haematopoietic stem cells that can be used to reconstitute the blood system and can easily be extracted and cryopreserved, thus allowing for the establishment of HLA-typed stem cell banks. Recently, it has been demonstrated that umbilical cord stem cells have the potential to give rise to non-haematopoietic cells, such as bone, neural and endothelial cells. It is not clear whether these multipotential cells are mesenchymal-like cells or blood cells. Currently, the number of these specialized cells capable of undergoing the differentiation process into non-haematopoietic cells is low and remains a block to the clinical development of umbilical cord stem cells for non-haematopoietic cell therapy. Further research will allow us to overcome these hurdles. This expanded potential for umbilical cord stem cells might replace embryonic stem cells and other fetal cells for some cell and tissue therapies.