Spontaneous transformation of cynomolgus mesenchymal stem cells in vitro: Further confirmation by short tandem repeat analysis

It remains a highly debatable issue whether mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can undergo spontaneous transformation in culture. Recently, two groups retracted their previous publications due to the finding that the claimed transformed cells are actually contaminating cancer cells, which calls for a more stringent identification of transformed cells in the field. In this study, we continued with our previous finding of spontaneous transformation of cynomolgus MSCs and provided further evidence using short tandem repeat analysis that the transformed mesenchymal stem cells were indeed derived from cynomolgus MSCs.