Figure 4.

Selective allodepletion may be used to dissociate graft-versus-host disease from the graft-versus-tumor effect in mesenchymal stem cell-mediated cancer therapy. When mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are co-cultured with a host stimulator population, host allospecificity may be activated, causing the expression of different surface-specific markers and the population with specific markers can be depleted using negative selection by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). To elicit the graft-versus-tumor (GVT) effect, the subset of MSCs that are reactive against the tumor can be positively selected by FACS, following the co-culture of MSCs and tumor antigen. The sorted MSC population subsets can be used for cancer therapy.