Amniotic fluid and placental stem cells as a source for urological regenerative medicine

Stem cells capable of differentiating to multiple lineages may be valuable for urological regenerative medicine. Recent research has described the presence in the amniotic fluid of stem cells with various differentiative and proliferative potentials. The use of amniotic fluid-derived stem cells does not present the same ethical challenges as the use of embryonic stem cells and the cells can be isolated using amniocentesis, a widely accepted procedure for prenatal diagnosis. This chapter summarizes the different progenitor cells that have been described so far in the amniotic fluid and the placenta and focuses in particular on mesenchymal stem cells and amniotic fluid-derived stem cells.