2. History

In 1970, Friedenstein and colleagues were the first who identified mesenchymal stem cells as colony-forming unit-fibroblasts (CFU-Fs) [4]. Pittenger and colleagues were the first to describe the tri-lineage potential of MSCs [3].

The first clinical trials of MSCs were completed in 1995 when a group of 15 patients were injected with cultured MSCs to test the safety of the treatment [1].
