Table 2 Various approaches utilized to detect and study endometrial stem cells
From: Very small embryonic-like stem cells are the elusive mouse endometrial stem cells- a pilot study
Various approaches | Salient observations and relevant references |
|---|---|
Classic concept | Stem cells may reside in the basal region of endometrium which continuously repairs the functional layer [27,50] |
Side population (SP) analysis | Side population cells are distributed throughout endometrium [51-53] |
Label retaining cells (LRCs) | Mouse LRCs decline with age, exist in lower region of stroma and exhibit undifferentiated markers including OCT-4 [25] |
| Â | LRCs detected in luminal epithelium and stromal cells adjacent to the luminal epithelium [54] in mouse endometrium |
| Â | LRCs detected only in the glandular epithelium [22] in humans |
Clonogenic assays | Human endometrial stromal progenitor cells can be cultured for more than 15 passages and show high clonogenic efficiency (15%) [55] |
| Â | Single endometrial stromal cell can form cellular colonies that can be further serially cloned and differentiated into various mesodermal lineages [56] |
Other relevant results | Pluripotent markers have also been reported in human endometrial and endometriotic samples [27-30] |
| Â | Bone marrow cells may be implicated in endometrial repair [47,57] |