Osteogenic differentiation of human Wharton's jelly stem cells on nanofibrous substrates in vitro.

Most tissue engineering studies use human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells for differentiation into desirable lineages. We derived a novel stem cell from the human umbilical cord Wharton's jelly (hWJSC) that has numerous advantages over other stem cell types in that they can be harvested in abundance very efficiently and painlessly with no risk of patient morbidity, have prolonged stemness properties in vitro, are hypoimmunogenic, and can be differentiated into many tissue types in two-dimensional culture. We compared four different three-dimensional nanofibrous scaffolds (polycaprolactone [PCL], PCL/collagen [PCL/Coll], PCL/hydroxyapatite [PCL/HA], and PCL/Coll/HA) for the attachment, proliferation, differentiation, and mineralization of hWJSCs into an osteogenic lineage. The collagen-based scaffolds (PCL/Coll and PCL/Coll/HA) showed better cell attachment and proliferation than PCL and PCL/HA, with increases of 41.80% and 38.52%, respectively. hWJSCs cultured on PCL/Coll/HA in the osteogenic medium up to 21 days demonstrated increased alkaline phosphatase activity and greater expression of osteocalcin, mineralization, and osteogenic-related genes compared to controls. Given the advantages of hWJSCs over other stem cell types, we propose that hWJSCs may be efficiently differentiated into an osteogenic lineage on a three-dimensional PCL/Coll/HA nanofibrous scaffold for the treatment of bone defects.