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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Med Res Rev. 2016 Dec 28;37(4):907–935. doi: 10.1002/med.21426

Table V.

Harnessing the Power of Regenerative Medicine in Vitiligo: Multiple Candidate Cell Populations for Initiating Vitiligo Repigmentation

Cell lineage Characteristics and technology Ref.
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)
  • Harvested as adherent cells from mesenchymal tissue

  • Adult stem cells with a lower risk of tumorigenesis that exist in mesenchymal tissues (such as dermis and fat tissue)

  • Ability to differentiate into a broad spectrum of cells, of mesodermal, ectodermal, or endodermal lineages

  • Generally composed of crude cell populations and contain different cell types based on their cell surface antigens

143
Embryonic stem (ES) cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells
  • Attractive cell sources for melanocyte induction

  • iPS cells are generated from somatic cells, such as fibroblasts using reprogramming methods

  • Limitation for their clinical use:

    • Ethical problems in obtaining ES cells (from fertilized eggs)

    • Potential risk of tumorigenesis for ES and patient-specific iPS cells

144149
  • Valuable material manipulated to reproduce ultrastructural abnormalities in different diseases, by modeling neural crest induction, melanocyte specification, and disease-related pigmentation defects

  • Human and mouse pluripotent stem cells were successfully differentiated into functional melanocytes under conditions that recapitulated the normal developmental process of human melanocytes in an in vitro condition

51
  • The pluripotent stem cell techniques:

    • Modeled pathological melanogenesis enhancing the reproduction of the ultrastructural features of pigmentation defects in Hermansky–Pudlak and Chediak–Higashi syndromes

    • Facilitated identification of a novel role of NF1 in the regulation of melanocyte senescence

148, 149
Multilineage differentiating stress-enduring (Muse) cells
  • Reside among adult human MSCs

  • Have characteristics similar to both pluripotent stem cells and MSCs:

    • Can be isolated by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS)

    • Ability to self-renew and differentiate into endodermal, mesodermal, and ectodermal lineages from a single cell

    • Low telomerase activity; do not form tumors in vivo, which makes them more attractive, with a higher potential for clinical application than ES and iPS cells

150
  • A muse-adipose tissue (AT) cell lineage was purified form the adipose tissue, that are capable of spontaneously differentiating into multiple cell lineages, including neural cells that have a common origin with melanocytes

151
Skin-derived precursor cells (SKPs)
  • Reported as multipotent mesenchymal stem cells in human foreskins, and in the connective tissue of the dermis and adipose tissue like Muse cells, from which they seem to be distinct

  • Not associated with particular structures such as dermal papilla, connective tissue sheath, or hair follicular epithelium

  • They express the SKP markers Snail and Slug, in contrast to Muse cells

152