Mesenchymal Stem Cell-based Therapy as a New Horizon for Kidney Injuries

Today, the prevalence of kidney diseases is increasing around the world, but there has still been no effective medical treatment. The therapeutic choices are confined to supportive cares and preventive strategies. Currently, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)-based cell therapy was proposed for the treatment of kidney injuries. However, after the transplantation of MSCs, they are exposed to masses of cytotoxic factors involving an inflammatory cytokine storm, a nutritionally-poor hypoxic environment and oxidative stresses that finally lead to minimize the efficacy of MSCs based cell therapy. Therefore, several innovative strategies were developed in order to potentiate MSCs to withstand the unfavorable microenvironments of the injured kidney tissues and improve their therapeutic potentials. This review aims to introduce MSCs as a new modality in the treatment of renal failure. Here, we discuss the clinical trials of MSCs-based therapy in kidney diseases as well as the in vivo studies dealing with MSCs application in kidney injuries mainly from the proliferation, differentiation, migration and survival points of view. The obstacles and challenges of this new modality in kidney injuries are also discussed.