The canine epiphyseal-derived mesenchymal stem cells are comparable to bone marrow derived-mesenchymal stem cells

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) hold great potential in cell therapy and have attractedincreasing interests in a wide range of biomedical sciences. However, the scarcity of MSCsand the prolonged isolation procedure limited the clinical application. To address these 2issues, we developed a method to isolate MSCs from bone biopsy tissues of euthanizedcanine body donors. Compared to the traditional method to isolate MSCs from aspirated bonemarrow (BMSCs), the isolation procedure for MSCs from harvested epiphyseal cancellous bone(EMSCs) was less time-consuming. The isolated EMSCs had similar plastic-adherence,tri-lineage differentiation and consistent surface marker profiles compared to BMSCs. Weharvested BMSCs and EMSCs from 24 euthanized cases from clinics and 42 euthanized donorsfrom a local shelter. The successful rate for EMSC isolation is significantly highercompared to BMSC isolation, while the other properties of the isolated MSCs including theclonogenicity, proliferative potentials and molecular phenotypes were not discerniblydifferent between the MSCs established by the two methods. In conclusion, we demonstrateda new procedure to harvest MSCs by bone biopsy at the epiphyseal region. This method isless time consuming and more reliable, and the resulting MSCs are comparable to thoseharvested by bone marrow aspiration. The combination of the two methods can greatlyimprove the efficiency to harvest MSCs.