New Strategies and In Vivo Monitoring Methods for Stem Cell-Based Anticancer Therapies

Figure 1

Stem cell-based strategies for anticancer therapy. Tumors can be specifically targeted with stem cells to make them vulnerable to therapy. Top: stem cell-based vaccines leverage the similarities between cancer cells and stem cells to promote immune tumor recognition; left: nanoparticle-loaded stem cells exhibit efficient homing to tumors, where they deliver their payload in the form of chemotherapies or apoptosis-inducing oligonucleotides; right: genetically engineered stem cells can express and release proapoptotic proteins or ligands in the tumor microenvironment or contain enzymes metabolizing prodrugs to their cytotoxic form (e.g., cytosine deaminase). Stem cells can also be engineered to recognize biophysical features of the tumor microenvironment before activating their engineered cytotoxic program.