Research Article

Inflammatory Human Umbilical Cord-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Promote Stem Cell-Like Characteristics of Cancer Cells in an IL-1β-Dependent Manner

Figure 6

A putative model for prostemness characteristics of inflammatory UC-MSCs cocultured with cancer cells. Upon coculturing with cancer cells, UC-MSCs possess inflammatory phenotype with enhanced IL-1β level. IL-1β derived from inflammatory UC-MSCs creates a prostemness niche by upregulating CCL2, CXCL1, IL-8, and IL-6 secretion in UC-MSCs in an autocrine manner, which reciprocally function on cancer cells, enhance side population (SP) ratio, and upregulate pluripotency markers.