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Review
. 2019 May 8;8(5):627.
doi: 10.3390/jcm8050627.

Urinary Stem Cells as Tools to Study Genetic Disease: Overview of the Literature

Maria Sofia Falzarano  1 , Alessandra Ferlini  2   3
Affiliations
Review

Urinary Stem Cells as Tools to Study Genetic Disease: Overview of the Literature

Maria Sofia Falzarano et al. J Clin Med. .

Abstract

Urine specimens represent a novel and non-invasive approach to isolate patient-specific stem cells by easy and low-cost procedures, replacing the traditional sources (muscle/skin biopsy/adipose tissue) obtained with invasive and time-consuming methods. Urine-derived stem cells (USCs) can be used in a broad field of applications, such as regenerative medicine, cell therapy, diagnostic testing, disease modelling and drug screening. USCs are a good source of cells for generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and importantly, they can also be directly converted into specific cell lines. In this review, we show the features of USCs and their use as a promising in vitro model to study genetic diseases.

Keywords: differentiation; genetic disease; induced pluripotent stem cells; stem cells; tissue regeneration; urinary cells.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Classification of stem cells. Stem cells can be classified according to their plasticity in: Totipotent that give rise to all embryonic and extraembryonic cell lines; pluripotent that can produce all embryonic cell types; multipotent that differentiate to a great number of cell types; oligopotent that have the ability to differentiate into only a few cell lineages; and unipotent that give rise to only one specific cell type.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic overview of three methodological procedures for cell isolation from different sources.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Cell morphology of early adherent urine-derived stem cells (USCs) 15 days (a, P1) and 21 days (b, P4) after isolation from urine specimens.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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