Abstract
Cancer is a devastating disease and the second cause of death in the developed world. Despite significant advances in recent years, such as the introduction of targeted therapies such as receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors and immunotherapy, current approaches are insufficient to stop the advance of the disease and many cancer types remain largely intractable. In this review, we describe the latest and most revolutionary stem cell-based approaches for the treatment of cancer. We also summarize the emerging imaging modalities being applied for monitoring anticancer stem cell therapy success and discuss the implications of these novel technologies for precision medicine.
Highlights
Cancer is the second cause of death of men and women in the United States and a major health problem worldwide [1]
In 1906 Schone would show that vaccination of animals with fetal tissues could render them partially resistant to cancer, demonstrating the close connection existing between cancer cells and stem cells [11]
An alternative approach at stem cell-based anticancer vaccination is the use of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC) to derive dendritic cells (DCs), which play an essential role in T cell activation, engineered to express tumor-specific antigens
Summary
Cancer is the second cause of death of men and women in the United States and a major health problem worldwide [1]. Therapeutic intervention has significantly advanced in the last two decades, with the introduction of targeted therapeutics such as receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (e.g., erlotinib in 2003) [3, 4] and immunotherapy (e.g., pembrolizumab in 2014) [5, 6] These compounds exhibit much higher selectivity for cancer cells over conventional treatments and minimize side effects. An innovative approach for cancer treatment in recent years is the use of stem cell-based therapies [9, 10]. In this context, rather than regenerating, repairing, or replenishing tissues, stem cells are carriers that infiltrate tumors to deliver lethal payloads and tell us about the mechanisms of cancer cell survival and immune evasion.
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