Recent Approaches to Isolating and Culturing Mouse Bone Marrow-derived Mesenchymal Stromal Stem Cells

The isolation and culture of murine Bone Marrow-derived Mesenchymal stromal Stem Cells (mBMSCs) have attracted great interest in terms of the pre-clinical applications of stem cells in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. In addition, culturing mBMSCs is important for studying the molecular mechanisms of bone remodeling using relevant transgenic mice. Several factors have created challenges in the isolation and high-yield expansion of homogenous mBMSCs; these factors include low frequencies of Bone Marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal Stem Cells (BMSCs) in bone marrow, variation among inbred mouse strains, contamination with Haematopoietic Progenitor Cells (HPCs), the replicative senescence phenotype and cellular heterogeneity. In this review, we provide an overview of nearly all protocols used for isolating and culturing mBMSCs with the aim of clarifying the most important guidelines for culturing highly purified mBMSC populations retaining in vitro and in vivo differentiation potential.