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    Home > Medical News > Medical World News > Nature: scientists have found the key factors to maintain hematopoietic stem cells

    Nature: scientists have found the key factors to maintain hematopoietic stem cells

    • Last Update: 2019-12-01
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    In the latest issue of nature, a research team at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has brought an important advance in the field of stem cells The team identified the key regulators of human blood stem cells, which can significantly enhance the self-renewal ability of blood stem cells in vitro The increase of transplantable blood stem cells means that the treatment of leukemia and other blood cancers and many inherited blood diseases is expected to be greatly improved in the future Blood stem cells, also known as hematopoietic stem cells They can self renew in bone marrow and differentiate into various types of blood cells such as red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, etc Because of the existence of blood stem cells, bone marrow transplantation can bring new life to patients when treating blood diseases or immune system diseases Although the treatment strategy of bone marrow transplantation has saved countless lives in decades, its limitations are also obvious: it is not easy to find a suitable bone marrow donor; the cells transplanted into the patient's body may be rejected by the immune system; moreover, the number of hematopoietic stem cells may not be enough to successfully treat the disease However, they encounter a huge obstacle: when blood stem cells from bone marrow are put into a culture dish, they will soon lose the ability to self renew, and then they will either die or differentiate into other blood cells How can we control human blood stem cells to maintain self-renewal in vitro? "We have to overcome this obstacle to move this area forward." Professor Hanna Mikkola, who has studied blood stem cells for more than 20 years, said Professor Hanna Mikkola and Dr Vincenzo calvanese are the main authors of this study (picture source: UCLA broad stem cell research center) For this reason, the research team led by Professor Mikkola and Dr Vincenzo calvanese began to analyze which genes will be closed when they lose the ability of self-renewal, especially when they differentiate into specific blood cells such as red blood cells and white blood cells From the analysis results, they found that the expression of one gene was closely related to the self-renewal potential of blood stem cells: MLLT3 The protein encoded by this gene is very rich in human fetal, newborn and adult blood stem cells, which provides necessary guidance for the maintenance of self-renewal ability of blood stem cells, and works together with other regulatory proteins to maintain cell division of blood stem cells However, under the condition of in vitro culture, the activity of this key regulatory factor decreased significantly In this case, if the level of MLLT3 protein is restored, can it help the blood stem cells in the culture dish maintain self-renewal ability? The experimental results verify the researchers' conjecture Using specially modified viruses as carriers of genetic information, they sent an active MLLT3 gene into blood stem cells Sure enough, after increasing the expression of MLLT3, the transplantable functional blood stem cells in the culture system can be increased by at least 12 times! "Given the number of blood stem cells needed to treat a patient, this is a large number." Professor Mikkola said ▲ after overexpression of MLLT3 gene, the number of transplantable blood stem cells in vitro increased significantly (picture source: reference [1]) What's more, the researchers believe that we should not only pay attention to the increase in quantity In the discussion part of the paper, they pointed out that since cell division itself always brings the risk of mutation, faster and larger quantity expansion is not the goal, but rather the hope that blood stem cells can self renew at a safe rate The results of this experiment showed that MLLT3 activation did not result from excessive proliferation or mutation of abnormal cells that may lead to leukemia After determining MLLT3 as the "maintenance factor of blood stem cells", the researchers said that the next step is to find out which proteins and genes affect the switch of MLLT3 and how to control it with culture components With this information, MLLT3 can be regulated in a safer way for human body instead of using virus vector, and will be used in clinical environment in the future.
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