Research progress on the effect of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) on lung cancer

Abstract

Lung cancer is one of the most common malignancies with the highest morbidity and mortality in the world, and the existing treatment methods often face challenges such as toxic side effects and drug resistance. Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) have become a promising new strategy in cancer treatment due to their unique biological characteristics (e.g., self-renewal, multi-differentiation and immune regulation). This paper reviews the mechanism of hUC-MSCs in regulating the proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and metastasis of lung cancer cells and tumor microenvironment, and discusses the dual effect of HUC-MSCs in promoting or inhibiting cancer. In addition, this paper also discusses the engineering transformation strategy of hUC-MSCs as gene and drug carriers, which provides a new research idea and theoretical basis for the development of hUC-MSC-based targeted therapy for lung cancer.

Keywords

Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) / Lung cancer treatment / Tumor microenvironment / Exosome / Genetic engineering technology

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Not applicable.

AUTHORS CONTRIBUTIONS

Yan Zhang contributed to the literature research, organization and manuscript drafting; Xingyang Pang contributed to the literature collection and manuscript drafting; Yonggang Li contributed to the manuscript revision; Yanwei Guo contributed to the study conception, design, manuscript review and final version approval.

FUNDING

The Project of Health and Wellness Science and Technology Plan in Baotou City (No. wsjkkj2022081).

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

INFORMED CONSENT

Obtained.

ETHICS APPROVAL

The Publication Ethics Committee of the Sciedu Press. The journal’s policies adhere to the Core Practices established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

PROVENANCE AND PEER REVIEW

Not commissioned; externally double-blind peer reviewed.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

DATA SHARING STATEMENT

No additional data are available.

OPEN ACCESS

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

COPYRIGHTS

Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal.

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