2023, Vol. 27 ›› Issue (6): 928-934

Acquisition and application of ectodermal mesenchymal stem cells

Zhang Qijian, Xu Ximing   

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Ectodermal mesenchymal stem cells are a kind of adult stem cells, which are easy to obtain and abundant in source, and play an important role in tissue repair and immune regulation.  
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the latest progress in the acquisition and application of ectodermal mesenchymal stem cells.
METHODS: Web of Science was searched with the key words of “ectodermal mesenchymal stem cells, stem cell therapy, spinal cord injury, neurodegenerative disease, sepsis”. The indexes were original studies and reviews. The retrieval period was from the establishment of the database to 2021. Totally 85 relevant articles were screened out and analyzed and summarized with the document tracing method.  
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: (1) Ectodermal mesenchymal stem cells are abundant and easy to obtain, and can be derived from dental tissue, nasal mucosa, and corneal tissue. Similar to mesoderm mesenchymal stem cells, they have the ability of multi-line differentiation and immunomodulatory function. (2) Epidermal mesenchymal stem cells share homology with dental tissue and neural tissue. Ectodermal mesenchymal stem cells have better ability of ligaments and nervous tissue differentiation, so they have unique advantages in dental tissue repair, spinal cord injury repair, neurodegenerative disease treatment and so on, so they have a very broad application prospect. (3) Immunomodulatory function of ectodermal mesenchymal stem cells also cannot be ignored. There is only a small amount of literature reports applied to sepsis and other immune diseases, but studies found that its immune regulation mechanism is same as mesoderm mesenchymal stem cells. In the meanwhile, the acquisition of ectodermal mesenchymal stem cells is less invasive; therefore, ectoderm mesenchymal stem cells have excellent prospects of clinical application.
Key words: ectodermal mesenchymal stem cell, stem cell therapy, dental tissue, spinal cord injury, neurodegenerative disease, sepsis, immune regulation, review