Evaluation of the Effect of Mesenchymal Stem Cells on Breast Cancer Migration and Metastasis: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Background and aim: Insufficient evidence in the field of the effect of MSCs on the migration of breast cancer cells caused the present study to be conducted with the consensus of the findings and to perform a meta-analysis to evaluate the effect of mesenchymal stem cells on breast cancer migration and metastasis.Material and methods: In the present systematic review and meta-analysis, information about mesenchymal stem cells in breast cancer patients in all articles published until the end of July 2023 through searching in databases PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, ISI, Web of Knowledge, Elsevier, Wiley, and Embase and Google Scholar search engine were extracted using keywords and their combinations by two trained researchers independently. Data analysis was done using the fixed effects model in the meta-analysis by STATA (version 17); a p-value less than 0.05 was considered significant.Results: Thirteen in-vitro and in-vivo studies were included in the meta-analysis process. The risk ratio of incidence of metastasis after MSCs administration was 7.37 (RR, 95% CI: 7.23, 7.53; I2 =99.86% (p=0.00), very high heterogeneity); human-MSCs from different sources appear to increase the migratory activity of MDA-MB-231 cells and MCF-7 cells compared to control group(p lt;0.01). Conclusions: Meta-analysis showed that MSCs are significantly effective in increasing the migration of breast cancer cells and metastasis. Therefore, MSCs can be a promising option for treating breast cancer metastases.