Growth Factor Gene-Modified Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Tissue Regeneration

Abstract

There have been marked changes in the field of stem cell therapeutics in recent years, with many clinical trials having been conducted to date in an effort to treat myriad diseases. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are the cell type most frequently utilized in stem cell therapeutic and tissue regenerative strategies, and have been used with excellent safety to date. Unfortunately, these MSCs have limited ability to engraft and survive, reducing their clinical utility. MSCs are able to secrete growth factors that can support the regeneration of tissues, and engineering MSCs to express such growth factors can improve their survival, proliferation, differentiation, and tissue reconstructing abilities. As such, it is likely that such genetically modified MSCs may represent the next stage of regenerative therapy. Indeed, increasing volumes of preclinical research suggests that such modified MSCs expressing growth factors can effectively treat many forms of tissue damage. In the present review, we survey recent approaches to producing and utilizing growth factor gene-modified MSCs in the context of tissue repair and discuss its prospects for clinical application.

Keywords:

• growth factor
• mesenchymal stem cell
• tissue regeneration
• genetic engineering

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Jilin Scientific and Technological Development Program and the Interdisciplinary Research Funding Program for PhD Students of Jilin University, for their support in developing this paper.

Data Sharing Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.