Bioregenerative Applications of the Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell- Derived Secretome: Part-I

Abstract

Mesenchymal stem cells hold many therapeutic benefits in treating diverse disease states, but autologous requirements, high costs, lack of standardization and other factors limit their widespread application. Additionally, researchers have discovered that many mesenchymal stem cell in-vivo benefits originate from their paracrine factors. Therefore, cell-free therapeutics, including mesenchymal stem cell-derived conditioned medium and extracellular vesicles have been suggested as alternative bioregenerative therapies. This literature review summarizes mesenchymal stem cell application, the benefits of cell-free strategies and the components of its secretome. This manuscript is a companion piece to “Part 2: Bioregenerative Applications of the Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell-Derived Secretome,” included in this issue, which contains the results of in-vivo studies applying the conditioned medium and extracellular vesicles to human and animal models, ongoing clinical trials, limitations to cell-free strategies and future directions for the wide-scale adoption of these therapies.