Does placenta hide the secret of an everlasting youth for human tissues?

Venue: Edificio Povo 2, via Sommarive nr. 9, Povo (Tn) - Room B102
 At 2:00 p.m.

• Roberto Sala​ -  Unità di Patologia Generale, Dipartimento di  Scienze Biomediche, Biotecnologiche e Traslazionali, Università degli Studi di Parma via Volturno 39, 43100, Parma

Fetal tissues are endowed with several types of multipotent cells so that they could be considered an important source of cells of great interest for reparative and regenerative medicine. Placenta, umbilical cord and amnion are of fetal origin and their collection does not raise ethical controversies, moreover, at delivery, they are still considered as useless materials. We are interested in villi of third trimester placentas. I will present some unpublished work on the placental stem cell population so far identified. In addition to c-Kit positive cells, by CD34 and CD133+  immunodepletion we isolated a cell population whose phenotypic characteristics were similar to those of mesenchymal stem cells derived from other sources. These cells also expressed the embryonic stem cell markers TRA 1-60, TRA 1-81, SSEA4. In addition, we tested the osteoconductive properties of an inorganic bovine bone scaffold (Bio-Oss spongiosa granules, 0.25mm-1mm particle size) on placental derived mesenchymal cells, and we found that proper culture conditions strongly increased the osteogenic differentiation of placental  cells.