Safety of mesenchymal stem cell transplantation

To date, adult stem cell therapy has some achievements in the treatment of chronic disease. However, some risks in stem cell transplantation still serve as high barriers obstructing the pulling of these therapies into clinical use. Tumorigenecity is of almost concern after it is injected into patients. However, all clinical studies indexed in PubMed showed that there were no cases of tumor after transplantation. Especially in recent study published in Cell Death and Disease, Wang et al. (2013) showed that long-term cultured mesenchymal stem cells could develop the genomic mutations but cannot undergo malignant transformation. Moreover, the study also revealed these stem cells as capable of forming tumors. This commentary assesses the data generated to date, and discusses the conclusions drawn from various studies.