Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are considered to be attractive approaching in gene or drug delivery for cancer therapeutic strategies. In this study, the ability and feasibility of human bone marrow derived MSCs expressing the cytosine deaminase (CD)/5-Fluorocytosin (5-FC) prodrug was evaluated to target human osteosarcoma cell line Cal-72. At first, the fibroblast-like cells were successfully obtained from human bone marrow and demonstrated that they contained full of stem characteristics by the ability of differentiation into adipocyte/osteocyte and expression of typical mesenchymal markers CD90, CD44, while negative for CD34 and CD133 markers. We established the stable CD-expressing MSCs cell line (CD-MSCs) by transfection of pEGFP-C3 containing cytosine deaminase::uracil phos-phoribosyltransferase (CD::UPRT) gene into MSCs, and confirmed that the manipulated MSCs still remained full characteristics of multipotent cells and shown migration toward human osteosarcoma cancer cells Cal-72 as high as origin MSCs. Based on bystander effect, the therapeutic CD-MSCs significantly augmented the cytotoxicity on cancer cell Cal72 in either direct co-culture or conditioned medium in the presence of 5-FC. Moreover, in osteosarcoma cancer- bearing mice, the therapeutic CD/5-FC MSCs showed the inhibition of tumor growth compared with control mice which was s.c injected with only Cal72. Our findings suggest that these therapeutic CD-MSCs may be suitable and viable cellular vehicles for targeting human osteosarcoma cancer.