Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 14, 2017; 23(46): 8152-8168
Published online Dec 14, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i46.8152
In vivo hepatic differentiation potential of human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells: Therapeutic effect on liver fibrosis/cirrhosis
Guo-Zun Zhang, Hui-Cong Sun, Li-Bo Zheng, Jin-Bo Guo, Xiao-Lan Zhang
Guo-Zun Zhang, Hui-Cong Sun, Li-Bo Zheng, Jin-Bo Guo, Xiao-Lan Zhang, Department of Gastroenterology, The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang 050000, Hebei Province, China
Guo-Zun Zhang, First Department of Gastroenterology, Cangzhou Central Hospital, Cangzhou 061001, Hebei Province, China
Hui-Cong Sun, Department of Internal Medicine, Ningbo Women and Children’s Hospital, Ningbo 315012, Zhejiang Province, China
Author contributions: Zhang GZ and Sun HC substantially contributed to the conception and design of the study and the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of the data; all authors drafted the article, made critical revisions related to the intellectual content of the manuscript, and approved the final version of the article to be published; Zhang GZ and Sun HC contributed equally to this manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Hebei Medical University Institutional Review Board.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All procedures involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Experimental Animal Center of Hebei Medical University (No. 911102).
Conflict-of-interest statement: We declare that there are no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and data set available from the corresponding author at xiaolanzh@126.com. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Xiao-Lan Zhang, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Gastroenterology, The Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, 215 West Heping Road, Shijiazhuang 050000, Hebei Province, China. xiaolanzh@hb2h.com
Telephone: +86-311-66007370
Received: March 27, 2017
Peer-review started: March 29, 2017
First decision: May 3, 2017
Revised: May 29, 2017
Accepted: August 9, 2017
Article in press: August 9, 2017
Published online: December 14, 2017
Processing time: 260 Days and 11.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Transplanted human umbilical cord-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) could differentiate into hepatocytes in vivo, thereby reducing the activation state of hepatic stellate cells, decreasing collagen deposition, and enhancing extracellular matrix remodeling in liver cirrhosis. hUC-MSCs play an important role in treating liver fibrosis and cirrhosis.