Cell rolling column in purification and differentiation analysis of stem cells

Various types of stem cell have been studied as potential cell sources in regenerative medicine. In particular, the autologous stem cells such as mesenchymal stem cells are being widely examined because they can be easily harvested from the patient. For regenerative medicine to become a safe and common practice, stem cells that exist together with various other kinds of cells in the organs must be isolated and purified without any loss of cell functions such as cytokine production or cell differentiation ability. Here, we briefly review the cell separation methods and introduce our original cell separation method based on the cell rolling phenomenon. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were conventionally isolated by using the adherent property of bone marrow cells onto a plastic culture dish, but they were considered as phenotypically and functionally heterogeneous. We developed a ligand-immobilized surface for separating a subpopulation of adherent cells derived from bone marrow and successfully isolated two cell populations with high differentiation ability for osteoblasts.