Research progress on the effect of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) on lung cancer

Lung cancer is one of the most common malignancies with the highest morbidity and mortality in the world, and the existing treatment methods often face challenges such as toxic side effects and drug resistance. Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUC-MSCs) have become a promising new strategy in cancer treatment due to their unique biological characteristics (e.g., self-renewal, multi-differentiation and immune regulation). This paper reviews the mechanism of hUC-MSCs in regulating the proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and metastasis of lung cancer cells and tumor microenvironment, and discusses the dual effect of HUC-MSCs in promoting or inhibiting cancer. In addition, this paper also discusses the engineering transformation strategy of hUC-MSCs as gene and drug carriers, which provides a new research idea and theoretical basis for the development of hUC-MSC-based targeted therapy for lung cancer.