Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have demonstrated that bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) can undergo malignant transformation and become the origin of malignant tumor cells.
OBJETIVE: To review the research progress in the methods and directions of induced differentiation and malignant transformation of BMSCs in recent years.
METHODS: The Pubmed database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed), SPRINGER database (http://www.springerlink.com) and Elsevier database (http://www.sciencedirect.com) were searched online with the key words of "mesenchymal stem cells" AND "differentiation" or "bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells" AND "transformation" in English. Papers were included from January 2000 to November 2010, Language was limited to English. Following reading titles and abstracts, repetitive researches and Meta analysis were excluded, 31 related articles recently published or in authoritative journals were reviewed.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: There are 3 approaches can be used for inducing BMSCs to differentiate in vitro at least, such as certain conditioned induction mediums, co-culture with purpose cells and cells or serum derived from pathological damaged model. BMSCs can be directionally differentiationed into almost all human tissue types’ cells that from the endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm. Experimental researchs and clinical case reports suggest that BMSCs can undergo malignant transformation and become the cell origin of many tumors. It is indicated that the security problems of BMSCs in clinical application need further study, and it may also provide a new vision for future tumor biological research.