 human skeletal muscle tissue displays specific cellular architecture easily damaged during individual existence , requiring multiple resources for regeneration . 
 congruent with local prerequisites , heterogeneous muscle stem cells ( muscs ) are present in the muscle interstitium . in this study , we aimed to characterize the properties of human muscle interstitial cells that had the characteristic morphology of telocytes ( tcs ) . 
 immunocytochemistry and immunofluorescence showed that cells with tc morphology stained positive for c - kit / cd117 and vegf . 
 c - kit positive tcs were separated with magnetic - activated cell sorting , cultured in vitro and expanded for study . these cells exhibited high proliferation capacity ( 60% expressed endoglin / cd105 and 
 80% expressed nuclear ki67 ) . 
 they also exhibited pluripotent capacity limited to oct4 nuclear staining . 
 in addition , 90% of c - kit positive tcs expressed vegf . 
 c - kit negative cells in the muscs population exhibited fibroblast - like morphology , low trilineage differential potential and negative vegf staining . 
 these results suggested that c - kit / cd117 positive tcs represented a unique cell type within the musc niche . 
Conflict of interest