Table 2.

Mesenchymal stromal cells inhibit or promote HCC progression

Dual function	Impact on biological behavior	MSCs	HCC cell line	Molecule mechanism	Reference
Inhibition	Inhibit proliferation	Z3 and BMMS-03	H7402/HepG2	NF-κB signaling	Qiao et al. [139]
		MSCs	HepG2	Notch1 signaling	Abdel Aziz et al. [140]
		fMSCs	Huh7	IGF-1R/PI3K/Akt signaling	Yulyana et al. [143]
		AMSCs	HepG2, Huh7, SMMC7721, Bel7402	Akt signaling	Zhao et al. [142]
	Induce apoptosis	AMSCs	,SMMC7721	Akt signaling	Zhao et al. [142]
		BMSCs	HepG2	Microvesicles	Bruno et al. [144]
	Inhibit growth	AMSCs	N1S1 rat HCC cells	Exosomes promote NKT-cell antitumor responses	Ko et al. [145]
	Inhibit invasion and metastasis	BMSCs	MHCC97-H	TGF-β signaling	Li et al. [146]
Promotion	Promote EMT	MSCs	SK-Hep-1	OPN	Bhattacharya et al. [151]
	Promote proliferation	BMSCs	HepG-2	–	Gong et al. [152]
	Promote angiogenesis	BMSCs	HepG-2	–	Gong et al. [152]
	Promote invasion and metastasis	BMSCs	SNU-398	CXCR4	Fontanella et al. [153]
		UCMSCs	HCCLM3	TGF-β signaling	Liu et al. [154]