Over time, healthy tissue can become dysfunctional due to age and injury. A human cell and tissue product (HCT/P) is administered to a recipient to repair, reconstruct, replace or supplement the same basic functions of the recipient.
Wharton’s jelly (WJ) is a gelatinous tissue within the umbilical cord that contains myofibroblast-like stromal cells. A unique cell population of WJ that has been suggested as displaying the stemness phenotype is the mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). Because MSCs’ stemness and immune properties appear to be more robustly expressed and functional which are more comparable with fetal than adult-derived MSCs, MSCs harvested from the “young” WJ are considered much more proliferative, immunosuppressive, and even therapeutically active than those isolated from older, adult tissue sources such as the bone marrow or adipose.