Development of stem cell therapy for the oral tissues damaged by chemo-radiation therapy

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Salivary gland atrophy or osteonecrosis are serious side effects for patients with head and neck cancer who received radiation- and/or chemo-therapy. It causes the harmful effects on the quality of life after cancer treatment. However, current clinical strategies cannot efficiently prevent the occurrence of these side effects. Therefore, effectivetherapy should be developed urgently. Recently, we have shown that cell therapy with bone marrow derived cells (BMDCs) displays the preventive effects to the radiation-induced salivary gland hypofunction. Therefore, to develop this strategy, we examined the detailed condition of cell transplantation in mouse model that has radiation-induced salivary gland atrophy and osteonecrosis. As results, both intra-grandular or intra-venous injections of BMDCs, and both young and older mouse donors were as effective in repairing irradiated salivary gland. However, though the cultured mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were also effective to rescue the salivary hypofunction by its injection via tail vein, the survival rate of mice was seriously decreased. Cultured MSCs seemed to cause the acute pulmonary embolism after injection.