Neuronal-like differentiation of human umbilical cord blood stem cells

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are primitive adult progenitor cells capable of differentiation into multiple blood cell lineages. In the past several years, there have been a significant number of publications suggesting that adult stem cells have a \u27plasticity\u27 that defies the central dogma of unidirectional cellular development. To promote the potential neuronal differentiation in HSCs, an optimal culturing and conditioning regimen was developed, and then examined for efficacy using both fresh and thawed HSCs derived from human umbilical cord blood. It was determined that neuronal-like cells can form from both fresh and thawed HSC-enriched populations when cultured in an optimized neuronal microenvironment