Immunomodulatory Properties of Mesenchymal Stem Cells: Cytokines and Factors

Abstract

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are defined as undifferentiated cells that are capable of self renewal and differentiation into several cell types such as chondrocyte, adipocyte, osteocyte, myocyte, hepatocyte, and neuron-like cells. MSC can be isolated from bone marrow, umbilical cord blood, adipose tissue, placenta, periosteum, trabecular bone, synovium, skeletal muscle, and deciduous teeth. Immunomodulatory of MSCs is one of the important issues nowadays, because this aspect can be clinically applied for graft-versus-host and autoimmune diseases. In this review, we tried to discuss in detail about cytokines and factors such as members of the transforming growth factor superfamily (transforming growth factor-β), hepatic growth factors (HGF), prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), IL-10, indolamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), nitric oxide (NO), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), and human leukocyte antigen-G (HLA-G) that are involved in immunomodulatory of MSCs.

Umbilical cord-derived stem cells (ModulatistTM) show strong immunomodulation capacity compared to adipose tissue-derived or bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells

“…The results also indicate that the suppression of MSCs is associated with or mediated by PGE2, which has been previously observed for UCMSCs (Kim et al, 2015;Yu et al, 2014). However, many published publications have also suggested the role of other factors (TGFbeta, HGF, PGE 2 , NO, and IDO) in immune modulation by MSCs (Ma et al, 2014;Soleymaninejadian et al, 2012;Zhao et al, 2016).…”

Cord-Blood-Derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Downmodulate CD4+T-Cell Activation by Inducing IL-10-Producing Th1 Cells

“…It is noteworthy that despite previously published data suggesting the importance of IL-10 in MSC-mediated immunosuppression [40][41][42], to our knowledge, no one has yet demonstrated that the putative effects of IL-10 could be reversed by blocking the IL-10 pathway. Such a discrepancy may not only be explained by the redundancy of MSC-induced inhibitory mechanisms [43][44][45], but also by the simple fact that while IL-10 + IFNg + T-cells are being generated during the first stimulation by the presence of MSCs, their accumulation occurs too late to have any effect.…”

Adipose mesenchymal stromal cells minimize and repair radiation-induced oral mucositis

“…Regarding the mechanism of action of MSCs, as stated earlier, researchers are suggesting that, the therapeutic benefits of MSCs in RORM might be mediated by their paracrine effects with or without homing to the injury site, rather than their differentiation properties replacing the damaged cells [55,70,71,195,196].…”