10. Conclusions and future directions

Since their first description in the 1960s, the history of MSCs has witnessed steady progress that ultimately resulted in their clinical application in the treatment of many disorders including several infectious diseases. Although the success has not been uniform with regard to various infections and despite the gap between the achievements in animal studies and results of clinical trials in humans, plenty of

### The Rising Role of Mesenchymal Stem Cells in the Treatment of Various Infectious Complications DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.91475

efforts have been made to resolve the remaining challenges in the clinical applications of MSCs in several diseases.

Some of the remaining challenges facing the utilization of MSCs in the clinical arena include: (1) encountering failure of treatment or resistance to therapy; (2) the need to have quality control and safety measures; (3) implementation of guidelines and design of specific protocols for: preparation and manufacture, banking and cryopreservation of MSC products, administration and therapeutic use of each type and source of MSCs, and finally tracing of infused MSCs; and (4) performing large prospective multicenter clinical trials on the use of specific MSCs in certain diseases in order to test their uniform efficacy and verify their long-term safety.
