Poor understanding of the differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has resulted in a low differentiation yield, and has hindered their application in medicine. As a solution, priming MSCs sensitive to signaling, thus stimulating differentiation into a specific cell lineage, may improve the differentiation yield. To demonstrate this, priming MSCs were produced by using a gelatin matrix for the isolation of primary MSCs from bone-marrow-derived primary cells. Subsequently, cellular characteristics and sensitivity to specific differentiation signals were analyzed at passage five. Compared to non-priming MSCs, priming MSCs showed no significant differences in cellular characteristics, but demonstrated a significant increase in sensitivity to neurogenic differentiation signals. These results demonstrate that generation of priming MSCs by specific extracellular signaling increases the rate of differentiation into a cell-specific lineage. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Inc.