Amniotic Fluid Progenitor Cells and Their Use in Regenerative Medicine

Abstract

In recent past, the potential use of stem cells and the advancement in stem cell research for Regenerative Medicine is considered as an alternative therapeutic strategy for a broad range of genetic and acquired diseases. The interest in stem cells has been increasing over the past years, since their discovery in the early ’90s, and they might represent a promising tool for regenerative purposes because of their capability to become almost any cell of an adult organism. Despite the discoveries and the promising results, many are the controversies raised by stem cells. Feasibility of their use for human therapeutic purposes is regulated by many requirements such as safety, accessibility to a source that can provide an adequate amount of cells for in vitro expansion, absence of ethical issues and repeatability of the results. Different lines of stem cells are investigated for understanding the basic mechanism of cellular differentiation and the potential for regenerative medicine purposes. However, to overcome safety and ethical issues, scientists are still looking for alternative sources that may provide easy and safe access to a cell population that may be used for cellular therapy. Amniotic fluid, due to its contact with the fetus, has been considered an interesting source for undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells. More recently, interest has been rising on more committed cell lines that may possibly provide new, more specific, tools for tissue regeneration. In particular, the isolation of cells already committed to a specific fate has been performed for kidney, pancreas and other organs and the study of these novel cell populations may give us an insight on cellular development and provide a more precise way of driving cell differentiation into a mature cell type. Nevertheless, our knowledge of amniotic fluid cellular composition is still incomplete and only in the last few years some studies have been published describing the different cell types that can be retrieved. As long as new discoveries are shared and new insights are given on amniotic fluid cellular composition and cell differentiation we can gain a better understanding of the mechanism underlying development. The main goal of this chapter is to provide the readers with a broad knowledge regarding the work that has been done until now to undisclose the heterogeneous amniotic fluid cellular composition and their use for regenerative medicine purposes.