Mesenchymal stem cells and cancer therapy: insights into targeting the tumour vasculature

Abstract

A crosstalk established between tumor microenvironment and tumor cells leads to contribution or inhibition of tumor progression. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are critical cells that fundamentally participate in modulation of the tumor microenvironment, and have been reported to be able to regulate and determine the final destination of tumor cell. Conflicting functions have been attributed to the activity of MSCs in the tumor microenvironment; they can confer a tumorigenic or anti-tumor potential to the tumor cells. Nonetheless, MSCs have been associated with a potential to modulate the tumor microenvironment in favouring the suppression of cancer cells, and promising results have been reported from the preclinical as well as clinical studies. Among the favourable behaviours of MSCs, are releasing mediators (like exosomes) and their natural migrative potential to tumor sites, allowing efficient drug delivering and, thereby, efficient targeting of migrating tumor cells. Additionally, angiogenesis of tumor tissue has been characterized as a key feature of tumors for growth and metastasis. Upon introduction of first anti-angiogenic therapy by a monoclonal antibody, attentions have been drawn toward manipulation of angiogenesis as an attractive strategy for cancer therapy. After that, a wide effort has been put on improving the approaches for cancer therapy through interfering with tumor angiogenesis. In this article, we attempted to have an overview on recent findings with respect to promising potential of MSCs in cancer therapy and had emphasis on the implementing MSCs to improve them against the suppression of angiogenesis in tumor tissue, hence, impeding the tumor progression.

Development of Stem Cell-Derived Immune Cells for Off-the-Shelf Cancer Immunotherapies

“…In this review, we highlighted the potential of stem cell-engineered immune cell populations other than conventional αβ T cells, specifically NK, γδ T, iNKT, and MAIT cells, to achieve this aim. Of note, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have also been investigated for cancer treatment [ 154 , 155 ]. MSCs can be used as cell carriers for targeted cancer therapy given their immune evasive and migratory properties.…”

Clinical application of mesenchymal stem cell in regenerative medicine: a narrative review

“…The MSCs have broad properties that make them a suitable source for cell therapy, such as stemness potency, easily isolation from different sources, they can be rapidly expanded in a large scale for clinical use, have less ethical issues as compared to ESCs, unlike iPSCs, MSCs transport a lower risk of teratoma formation, and they are beneficial for a wide scale of therapeutic applications due to their capability to migrate to injured tissue through chemo-attraction [38][39][40]. In addition, MSCs can release a variety of bioactive components including proteins, growth factors chemokines, microRNAs (miRNAs), and cytokines which can suggest their acceptable application [41].…”

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma: mesenchymal stem cells and their extracellular vesicles as potential therapeutic tools

“…MSCs are multipotent adult stem cells which have become extensively studied during the past 30 years in both preclinical and clinical trials for numerus disorders [ 31 , 32 ]. They can differentiate into multiple lineages, including osteocytes, adipocytes and chondrocytes and can be found approximately in all postnatal organs such as bone marrow (BM), adipose tissue (AD), human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hi-PSC), Wharton’s Jelly (WJ), human cord blood (hUC), umbilical cord (UCB), and human amniotic membrane (hAM) as well as human placental (hP) and dental follicle [ 33 – 35 ]. In general, these MSCs express surface markers, such as CD105, CD90, and CD73, but not CD34, CD45, CD19, CD11b, CD79α, and CD14 [ 36 – 38 ].…”