Traceable Therapeutic Strategy for Treatment of Breast Cancer with Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs)

With the ability of tropism towards tumors, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been considered to be attractive delivering vehicles for antitumor therapy. Molecular imaging allows noninvasive tracking of molecular or cellular processes in vivo, as well as evaluation of targeted cancer therapy. We recently exploited bioluminescence imaging (BLI) and near infrared (NIR) imaging to evaluate the interaction between human umbilical cord MSCs (hUC-MSCs) and pre-established tumor. Our results revealed that the transplanted hUCMSCs played a critical antitumor role in vivo in a human breast cancer xenograft model by inhibiting tumor angiogenesis and inducing cell apoptosis. Our finding demonstrates that molecular imaging is a powerful tool in tracking cell delivery and tumor response to hUC-MSCs therapies as well as cellular and molecular processes in tumor, which will eventually benefit future preclinical studies in cancer diagnosis and therapy through accurate and sensitive imaging techniques.