Fig. 1
From: The role and potential of umbilical cord blood in an era of new therapies: a review
Umbilical cord: a tube containing highly ‘stem’ cell-enriched blood. Representative images show a the fetal face of a placenta from which an umbilical cord grows as a flexible, spongy-looking, tube-like structure usually around 55 cm or 2 feet, b a transversal section of umbilical cord showing two arteries (A) and one vein (V), and c a Masson’s trichrome staining of a complete umbilical cord microsection. At the structural level, amniotic membrane (AM), Wharton’s jelly (WJ), and smooth musculature (SM) associated with a blood vessel’s wall (VW) and lumen (VL) can be clearly distinguished. d The blood entrapped in the umbilical cord is recognized as a highly enriched source of valuable cells which can be visualized by, for example, fluorescence in situ hybridization using specific probes for X (green) and Y (red) chromosome