Priming mesenchymal stem cells to develop "super stem cells"

Abstract

The stem cell pre-treatment approaches at cellular and sub-cellular levels encompass physical manipulation of stem cells to growth factor treatment, genetic manipulation, and chemical and pharmacological treatment, each strategy having advantages and limitations. Most of these pre-treatment protocols are non-combinative. This editorial is a continuum of Li et al's published article and Wan et al's editorial focusing on the significance of pre-treatment strategies to enhance their stemness, immunoregulatory, and immunosuppressive properties. They have elaborated on the intricacies of the combinative pre-treatment protocol using pro-inflammatory cytokines and hypoxia. Applying a well-defined multi-pronged combinatorial strategy of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), pre-treatment based on the mechanistic understanding is expected to develop "Super MSCs", which will create a transformative shift in MSC-based therapies in clinical settings, potentially revolutionizing the field. Once optimized, the standardized protocols may be used with slight modifications to pre-treat different stem cells to develop "super stem cells" with augmented stemness, functionality, and reparability for diverse clinical applications with better outcomes.

Keywords: Cell survival; Cell therapy; Pre-treatment; Preconditioning; Stem cells; Super stem cells.

Figure 1

Summary of mesenchymal stem cell priming strategies to develop “super mesenchymal stem cells” with enhanced stemness, biology, and functionality. AD: Adrenomedullin; An: Anoxia; Cytok: Cytokine; GF: Growth factor; Hypo: Hypoxia; IL: Interleukin; MSC: Mesenchymal stem cell; PCM: Preconditioning mimetics; Pharma: Pharmacological; Pro-S: Pro survival; Scaf: Scaffold; Sec: Secretome; Therm: Thermal.