Naïve Adult Stem Cells Isolation from Primary Human Fibroblast Cultures

Over the last decade, several adult stem cell populations have been identified in human skin ^1-4. The isolation of multipotent adult dermal precursors was first reported by Miller F. D laboratory ^{5, 6}. These early studies described a multipotent precursor cell population from adult mammalian dermis ⁵. These cells--termed SKPs, for skin-derived precursors-- were isolated and expanded from rodent and human skin and differentiated into both neural and mesodermal progeny, including cell types never found in skin, such as neurons ⁵. Immunocytochemical studies on cultured SKPs revealed that cells expressed vimentin and nestin, an intermediate filament protein expressed in neural and skeletal muscle precursors, in addition to fibronectin and multipotent stem cell markers ⁶. Until now, the adult stem cells population SKPs have been isolated from freshly collected mammalian skin biopsies.

Recently, we have established and reported that a population of skin derived precursor cells could remain present in primary fibroblast cultures established from skin biopsies ⁷. The assumption that a few somatic stem cells might reside in primary fibroblast cultures at early population doublings was based upon the following observations: (1) SKPs and primary fibroblast cultures are derived from the dermis, and therefore a small number of SKP cells could remain present in primary dermal fibroblast cultures and (2) primary fibroblast cultures grown from frozen aliquots that have been subjected to unfavorable temperature during storage or transfer contained a small number of cells that remained viable ⁷. These rare cells were able to expand and could be passaged several times. This observation suggested that a small number of cells with high proliferation potency and resistance to stress were present in human fibroblast cultures ⁷.

We took advantage of these findings to establish a protocol for rapid isolation of adult stem cells from primary fibroblast cultures that are readily available from tissue banks around the world (Figure 1). This method has important significance as it allows the isolation of precursor cells when skin samples are not accessible while fibroblast cultures may be available from tissue banks, thus, opening new opportunities to dissect the molecular mechanisms underlying rare genetic diseases as well as modeling diseases in a dish.