title: Mesenchymal stem cells engineered for cancer therapy.
abstract: Recent pre-clinical and clinical studies have shown that stem cell-based therapies hold tremendous promise for the treatment of human disease. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) are emerging as promising anti-cancer agents which have an enormous potential to be utilized to treat a number of different cancer types. MSC have inherent tumor-trophic migratory properties, which allows them to serve as vehicles for delivering effective, targeted therapy to isolated tumors and metastatic disease. MSC have been readily engineered to express anti-proliferative, pro-apoptotic, anti-angiogenic agents that specifically target different cancer types. Many of these strategies have been validated in a wide range of studies evaluating treatment feasibility or efficacy, as well as establishing methods for real-time monitoring of stem cell migration in vivo for optimal therapy surveillance and accelerated development. This review aims to provide an in depth status of current MSC-based cancer therapies, as well as the prospects for their clinical translation.
authors: Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. kshah@helix.mgh.harvard.edu
authors: Khalid
authors: K
authors: Shah
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000493:pharmacokinetics; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D006801:Humans; D059630:Mesenchymal Stem Cells; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy*
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents