羊水干细胞的研究现状

Current Status of Research on Amniotic Fluid-derived Stem Cells

由于羊水干细胞(AFSC)具有高度增殖能力、来源容易、免疫原性弱、致瘤性低、符合伦理学等独特优势,并与其它干细胞一样存在多向分化潜能,在细胞治疗或组织工程研究中展现出广阔的应用前景,使其极有望成为心血管疾病再生医学的理想种子细胞。羊水干细胞在心血管疾病中的研究尚处于起步阶段,尽管许多研究结果令人振奋,但将其应用于心血管疾病再生医学中仍面临许多挑战,在很多方面的研究亟需深入。我们总结了羊水干细胞的性质、获取羊水的时机对羊水干细胞的影响、分离纯化及鉴定方法,重点综述羊水干细胞向心血管细胞分化的潜能及在心脏组织工程中的应用现状和相关问题。

The amniotic fluid-derived stem cells（AFSC） possess considerable advantageous characteristics including high proliferation potential,easy availability,low immunogenicity and oncogenicity,and accordance with medical ethnics. Moreover,they do not require the sacrifice of human embryos for their isolation and the cells can differentiate into all three kinds of germs.Accordingly,they initiate a new and very promising field in stem cell research and they will be a potential source of stem cells for therapies related to regeneration medicine of cardiovascular diseases.The research about the AFSC utilization in cardiovascular diseases is just started.Though there were some exciting breakthroughs, there still remain many challenges.In the article,we will discuss AFSC characteristics,influence of amniotic fluid harvesting time on stem cells,isolation and purification,emphasizing mainly on the potential of AFSC differentiation into cardiovascular cells,current situation and problems in this field.