Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Jan 30;18(1):42.
doi: 10.1186/s12967-020-02234-x.

Improved therapeutics of modified mesenchymal stem cells: an update

Dickson Kofi Wiredu Ocansey  1   2 , Bing Pei  3 , Yongmin Yan  1 , Hui Qian  1 , Xu Zhang  1 , Wenrong Xu  1 , Fei Mao  4
Affiliations
Review

Improved therapeutics of modified mesenchymal stem cells: an update

Dickson Kofi Wiredu Ocansey et al. J Transl Med. .

Abstract

Background: Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) have attracted intense interest due to their powerful intrinsic properties of self-regeneration, immunomodulation and multi-potency, as well as being readily available and easy to isolate and culture. Notwithstanding, MSC based therapy suffers reduced efficacy due to several challenges which include unfavorable microenvironmental factors in vitro and in vivo. BODY: In the quest to circumvent these challenges, several modification techniques have been applied to the naïve MSC to improve its inherent therapeutic properties. These modification approaches can be broadly divided into two groups to include genetic modification and preconditioning modification (using drugs, growth factors and other molecules). This field has witnessed great progress and continues to gather interest and novelty. We review these innovative approaches in not only maintaining, but also enhancing the inherent biological activities and therapeutics of MSCs with respect to migration, homing to target site, adhesion, survival and reduced premature senescence. We discuss the application of the improved modified MSC in some selected human diseases. Possible ways of yet better enhancing the therapeutic outcome and overcoming challenges of MSC modification in the future are also elaborated.

Conclusion: The importance of prosurvival and promigratory abilities of MSCs in their therapeutic applications can never be overemphasized. These abilities are maintained and even further enhanced via MSC modifications against the inhospitable microenvironment during culture and transplantation. This is a turning point in MSC-based therapy with promising preclinical studies and higher future prospect.

Keywords: Genetic; Mesenchymal stem cells; Modification; Preconditioning; Therapy.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The focal points of enhancement of MSC properties during modification. MSC modification is geared towards improving their inherent therapeutic properties via enhanced migration, adhesion, survival and reduced senescence. These properties are interdependent and greatly influenced by pretreatment factors and expressed cytokines
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The cycle of naïve MSCs to modified MSCs towards clinical application. The ordinary MSC is confronted with several inhospitable factors that cause it to have reduced therapeutic effect. Upon preconditioning and/or genetic modification, they gain improved therapeutic functionalities of increased injury repair and disease recovery
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Radrizzani M, Lo Cicero V, Soncin S, Bolis S, Sürder D, Torre T, et al. Bone marrow-derived cells for cardiovascular cell therapy: an optimized GMP method based on low-density gradient improves cell purity and function. J Transl Med. 2014;12:276. doi: 10.1186/s12967-014-0276-0. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Fisher SA, Doree C, Mathur A, Taggart DP, Martin-Rendon E. Stem cell therapy for chronic ischaemic heart disease and congestive heart failure. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2016 doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD007888.pub3. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gee AP, Richman S, Durett A, McKenna D, Traverse J, Henry T, et al. Multicenter cell processing for cardiovascular regenerative medicine applications: the cardiovascular cell therapy research network (CCTRN) experience. Cytotherapy. 2010;12:684–691. doi: 10.3109/14653249.2010.487900. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Politis M, Lindvall O. Clinical application of stem cell therapy in Parkinson’s disease. BMC Med. 2012;10:1. doi: 10.1186/1741-7015-10-1. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Yasuhara T, Kameda M, Sasaki T, Tajiri N, Date I. Cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease. Cell Transplant. 2017;26:1551–1559. doi: 10.1177/0963689717735411. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources