Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Recent studies have demonstrated that bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) can support in vitro hematopoiesis, promote reconstruction of in vivo hematopoietic function, have low immunogenicity and inhibit proliferation of allogenic T lymphocytes, and play important roles in regulating transplantation immunity. However, its mechanism remains unclear.
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the immunoloregulation characteristics of BMSCs and its effects on hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.
METHODS: The first author searched PubMed database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed) published from 2000 to 2008 for articles on effects of BMSCs on transplantation immunity. The key words were “BMSCs, hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, transplantation immunity”. Repetitive studies were excluded. Finally, 37 articles were included for this review.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: BMSCs are stem cells in the bone marrow besides hematopoietic stem cells. In immune reaction, BMSCs can avoid immunological recognition, and suppress immune reaction. The immunesuppressive effects of BMSCs are effectively used in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, can decrease graft versus host disease, promote graft survival, and have wide application prospect. However, at present, there is no unified standard to identify BMSCs, and the specific marker of BMSCs has not been screened. Some problems should be further investigated such as lack of safety assessment, whether BMSCs affected graft versus leukemia when affected graft versus host disease, as well as the effects on tumor cell growth.