Isolation of putative stem cells present in human adult olfactory mucosa

The olfactory mucosa (OM) has the unique characteristic of pursuing almost continuous neurogeneration during adulthood in response to external injuries to maintain olfactory function due to the presence of stem cells. The easily accessibility of the OM in humans is a feature that makes these stem cells relevant candidates for the development of regenerative therapies. In this report we present an in depth characterization of patient derived OM together with the characterization of their respective OM derived cultures. In addition, we present a method for the enrichment and isolation of OM stem cells that can be used for future translational sought studies regarding plasticity, neuro-regeneration or disease modeling. several patient OM derived cell cultures were collected and analyzed individually for array employing the GeneChip® Human Genome U133A 2.0 array from affimatrix