Reply from William Gunn

William Gunn — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:11:58 -0000

It’s the undifferentiated MSCs that provide the stromal support and interact with cancer cells, so tissue engineering applications, using differentiated cells, shouldn’t be affected at all. Not to mention that tissue engineering usually involves putting the cells in a scaffold or something and localizing them, so unless you’re implanting the cells on top of a tumor, there shouldn’t be an issue there, either.

A few years ago, a collaborator wanted to use MSCs to regrow myeloma bone lesions, and we suggested that might not be the best idea given the then known interactions of MSCs and cancer cells, so Weinberg’s paper isn’t really coming out with anything new in terms of discovering that MSCs might promote tumor growth. The CCL5 mechanism is new and is interesting, but the clinical trials I know of already take the “these are stromal cells which secrete growth factors” angle into account, so it shouldn’t change anything we’re currently doing.

It’s nice, important, and thorough work they did, but it bears mentioning that Andreeff have been working in this area for some time, somehow never taking the “OMG! MSCs CAUSE TEH CANCERZ!” angle, and I’m not sure it raised the level of dialogue for the authors and Nature to do so with this paper.

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Reply from William Gunn