Short excerpt from a YouTube video by Joy Kong, MD explaining that stem cells isolated from birth tissues (e.g., placenta/umbilical-derived tissues) are developmentally "younger" than the baby's own stem cells because they were arrested during embryogenesis, retaining embryonic stem cell markers lost in the baby's cells and occupying an intermediate state between embryonic and neonatal stem cells.
What's interesting is cells from these tissues are actually younger. The stem cells from these birth tissue are younger than the baby's stem cells, because when the embryo was forming, all these cells were trapped in the birth tissue. Right. Instead of just going into the baby and keep developing with the baby, they were trapped and kind of arrested in their development. They were paused. So they retain a lot of the early characteristics. They actually have embryonic stem cell markers that are no longer present in the baby's stem cells. So they're kind of in between the embryonic stem cell and the baby's stem cells.
