Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Mar 26, 2015; 7(2): 368-379
Published online Mar 26, 2015. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v7.i2.368
Mesenchymal stem cells as a therapeutic tool to treat sepsis
Eleuterio Lombardo, Tom van der Poll, Olga DelaRosa, Wilfried Dalemans
Eleuterio Lombardo, Olga DelaRosa, TiGenix SAU, Parque Tecnológico de Madrid, 28760 Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain
Tom van der Poll, Academic Medical Center, Division of Infectious Diseases and The Center of Experimental and Molecular Medicine, University of Amsterdam, 1105AZ Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Wilfried Dalemans, TiGenix NV, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
Author contributions: Lombardo E, van der Poll T, DelaRosa O and Dalemans W conceived and wrote the manuscript.
Supported by The Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (CAM) through the Program Madrid Network.
Conflict-of-interest: Authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Eleuterio Lombardo, PhD, TiGenix SAU, Parque Tecnológico de Madrid, C/Marconi 1, 28760 Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain. eleuterio.lombardo@tigenix.com
Telephone: +34-91-8049264 Fax: +34-91-8049263
Received: September 29, 2014
Peer-review started: October 1, 2014
First decision: October 28, 2014
Revised: November 13, 2014
Accepted: December 16, 2014
Article in press: December 17, 2014
Published online: March 26, 2015
Processing time: 171 Days and 18.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Sepsis remains as the most frequent cause of death in hospitalized patients and, therefore, new therapeutic alternatives are needed. Adult mesenchymal stem cells reduce mortality in experimental models of sepsis by modulating the deregulated inflammatory response against bacteria through the regulation of multiple inflammatory networks, the reprogramming of macrophages and neutrophils towards a more anti-inflammatory phenotype and the release of anti-microbial peptides. In this report we aim to provide a comprehensive snapshot of the potential clinical use of cell therapy with mesenchymal stem cells for sepsis.