Abstract
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common malignant tumor of the gastrointestinal tract with nonobvious early symptoms and late symptoms of anemia, weight loss, and other systemic symptoms. Its morbidity and fatality rate are next only to gastric cancer, esophageal cancer, and primary liver cancer among digestive malignancies. In addition to the conventional surgical intervention, other therapies such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy and new treatment methods such as biologics and microbiological products have been introduced. As a promising cell therapy, mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) has attracted extensive research attention. MSCs are early undifferentiated pluripotent stem cells, which have the common features of stem cells, including self-replication, self-division, self-renewal, and multidirectional differentiation. MSCs come from a wide range of sources and can be extracted from a variety of tissues such as the bone marrow, umbilical cord, and fat. Current studies have shown that MSCs have a variety of biological functions such as immune regulation, tissue damage repair, and therapeutic effects on tumors such as CRC. This review outlines the overview of MSCs and CRC and summarizes the role of MSC application in CRC.
Highlights
Since the discovery of mesenchymal stem cell (MSC), researchers have deeply discussed their physiological characteristics
The current cure rate of Colorectal cancer (CRC) is low, and the available treatment interventions are associated with a lot of side effects
MSC therapy has been highly regarded as a promising method for the treatment of clinical diseases including tumors
Summary
Since the discovery of MSCs, researchers have deeply discussed their physiological characteristics. Exosomes derived from MSCs possess the functional ability to be applied for tissue damage repair and cancer inhibition and avoid the adverse reactions. MSCs and their derived exosomes possess the ability to regulate the tumor microenvironment through paracrine and direct contact to inhibit CRC cells [25, 26]. We aim to discuss the current knowledge of the effect of MSCs and their exosomes on CRC, including the mechanism of MSCs’ inhibitory function in the CRC microenvironment, and the tumor-promoting effect of MSCs that cannot be ignored.
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