Ability to track stem cells in tumors could advance cancer treatments
The study produced solid evidence that the injected stem cells migrate to the tumors and don’t begin to differentiate into other types of cells until they are at the tumor sites. In some of the mice, the breast cancer cells had begun to spread to the lungs. Researchers found that the injected stem cells also migrated to the lung cancer tumors. In addition, the stem cells that migrated to lung tumors differentiated into bone cells, while the stem cells that migrated to breast cancer tumors differentiated into fat cells. The results indicate that stem cells can migrate both to breast cancer cells and their lung metastasis. In addition, the MSCs differentiate into distinctly different cells. “The next logical step of this study is to incorporate therapeutic genes into MSCs and use multimodality molecular imaging techniques to follow the distribution, homing, survival, proliferation and cell/gene therapy efficacy of the MSC platform,” said Wang.
This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.