Cell Therapy News/Articles, page-250

From Nature International Journal of Science

CORRESPONDENCE
05 FEBRUARY 2019

Medicinal signalling cells: they work, so use them

Arnold I Caplan

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I agree with Douglas Sipp and colleagues that clinics should stop using ‘mesenchymal stem cell’ nomenclature to market stem-cell and regenerative-medicine therapies (Nature 561, 455–457; 2018). But we should not discard 25 years of data and clinical experience simply because I misguidedly coined that term for perivascular cells in 1991. A rigorous consensus document now describes the proper nomenclature for these cells (see I. R. Murray et al. J. Bone Joint Surg. Am.; in the press).

In 2010, I asked the cell-therapy industry to change the term mesenchymal stem cells to medicinal signalling cells (MSCs). This was because, although the MSCs can be induced to differentiate in culture, they do not do this in vivo. However, even such heterogenous MSC preparations show therapeutic functionality when introduced into the body, suggesting that they have paracrine (that is, medicinal) capacity (see go.nature.com/2hwezck). They show promise against graft-versus-host disease (in the Mesoblast phase III clinical trial) and lower-back pain (Mesoblast phase II clinical trial). They also offset heart-attack damage (L. Bagno et al. Mol. Ther. 26, 1610–1623; 2018).

Scientists will eventually work out how MSC preparations achieve their therapeutic effect, and companies can then make them more effective and less expensive. It will also enable us to design better isolation, cultivation and patient-presentation protocols.

Nature 566, 39 (2019)