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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Mol Aspects Med. 2013 Oct 19;0:33–49. doi: 10.1016/j.mam.2013.10.003

Figure 3. Potential strategies to target MSCs.

Figure 3

Top left: Targeting of the self-renewal pathway of MSCs disabling their ability to replicate. Top right: Blocking chemotherapy resistance mediators (such as ABCB5 or ALDH) combined with standard chemotherapy to sensitize MSCs to drug-based killing. Bottom left: Modification of MSCs with drugs to initiate differentiation that would then undergo apoptosis, or be sensitized to chemotherapies. Bottom right: Utilization of MSC-specific, or MSC/bulk tumor-shared antigens to develop patient vaccines to enhance endogenous immune responses to destroy MSCs. Similarly, eliciting antibody-dependent cell cytotoxicity (ADCC) via administration of monoclonal antibodies to MSC-restricted antigens represents an additional means of for patient immune cells to specifically target the melanoma stem cell component of the tumor.