Management of Fibrosis: The Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Breakthrough

Figure 4

Common outcome of MSC therapy for various fibrotic diseases. Based on the studies reported in this work, several mechanisms have been underlined, mostly concerning inflammatory reaction and apoptosis, oxidative stress/hypoxia modulation, and extracellular matrix remodeling. It appears that MSC secretome activates a wide range of antifibrotic pathways (ECM: extracellular matrix, EMT: epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, LAP: latency associated protein, MMP: matrix metalloproteinase, MSC: mesenchymal stromal cell, TGF-β: transforming growth factor-β, and TIMP: tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase).