Journal of Advanced Biomedical Sciences

Bone marrow (BM) has been regarded as the primarily source of hematopoietic stem cells for many years. Recent researches have shown BM contains not only hematopoietic but also heterogeneous non-hematopoietic stem cells. Till now, similar or overlapping isolation strategies of primitive non-hematopoietic stem cells in BM were named by different investigators and hence were assigned different names (e.g. mesenchymal stem cells, or multipotent adult progenitor cells) from alternative sources and different animal species. The differentiation potential of these cells to mesenchymal lineages has generated a great deal of interest in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Murine Mesenchymal stem cells (mMSCs) are appropriate models for preclinical investigations on human cell therapies. The isolation of BM-derived mMSCs is discussed as an unresolved issue in mesenchymal stem cells researches. The objective of the present review is the description of multiple methodological approaches to isolate mMSCs.