Published online Oct 26, 2020. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v12.i10.1080
Peer-review started: May 29, 2020
First decision: June 15, 2020
Revised: June 26, 2020
Accepted: August 24, 2020
Article in press: August 24, 2020
Published online: October 26, 2020
Processing time: 149 Days and 23.4 Hours
Cell therapy, i.e., the use of cells to repair an affected tissue or organ, is at the forefront of regenerative and personalized medicine. Among the multiple cell types that have been used for this purpose [including adult stem cells such as mesenchymal stem cells or pluripotent stem cells], urine-derived stem cells (USCs) have aroused interest in the past years. USCs display classical features of mesenchymal stem cells such as differentiation capacity and immunomodulation. Importantly, they have the main advantage of being isolable from one sample of voided urine with a cheap and unpainful procedure, which is broadly applicable, whereas most adult stem cell types require invasive procedure. Moreover, USCs can be differentiated into renal cell types. This is of high interest for renal cell therapy-based regenerative approaches. This review will firstly describe the isolation and characterization of USCs. We will specifically present USC phenotype, which is not an object of consensus in the literature, as well as detail their differentiation capacity. In the second part of this review, we will present and discuss the main applications of USCs. These include use as a substrate to generate human induced pluripotent stem cells, but we will deeply focus on the use of USCs for cell therapy approaches with a detailed analysis depending on the targeted organ or system. Importantly, we will also focus on the applications that rely on the use of USC-derived products such as microvesicles including exosomes, which is a strategy being increasingly employed. In the last section, we will discuss the remaining barriers and challenges in the field of USC-based regenerative medicine.
Core Tip: Urine-derived stem cells (USCs) display classical features of mesenchymal stem cells such as differentiation capacity and immunomodulation. Importantly, they are easily isolated from voided urine. Moreover, USCs can be differentiated into many cell types including renal cells. This review will describe the isolation and characterization of USCs and detail their differentiation capacity. Then, we will present the main applications of USCs, from reprogramming into human induced pluripotent stem cells to their use for cell therapy approaches (either directly or via their exosomes). Finally, the remaining barriers and challenges in the field of USC-based regenerative medicine will be discussed.