Abstract
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have attracted significant attention as potential therapeutic cells to treat various diseases ranging from tissue injuries, graft versus host disease, degenerative diseases and cancer. Since the initial discovery of MSCs in the bone marrow cells, MSCs have been successfully isolated from various adult and neo-natal tissues, albeit the procedures are often coupled with difficulties in harvesting tissue and produce low yield of cells, requiring extensive expansion in vitro. Here, we explored extra-ocular muscle tissues obtained from patients as a novel source of MSCs which express characteristic cell surface markers of MSCs and show multilineage differentiation potential with high proliferation capacity.