Comparative phenotypic transcriptional characterization of human full-term placenta-derived mesenchymal stromal cells compared to bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells after differentiation in myogenic medium.

Placenta-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (pMSCs) are a very attractive source of MSCs. In this short report we evaluated the expression of phenotypic markers from fetal and maternal pMSCs after exposure to myogenic medium commonly used to differentiate bone marrow MSCs (bmMSCs) to smooth muscle-like cells (SMCs). In order to reveal differences between these different MSC sources, cells were expanded and differentiated to elucidate whether this differentiation protocol facilitated efficient differentiation of SMCs from human pMSCs. We report that TGF-β1, PDGF and ascorbic acid is not sufficient to produce SMCs from pMSCs.