This protein tells another protein, called neuropilin 1, to kill damaged blood vessels in the bone marrow. It typically takes several weeks for these counts to return to normal levels.Ĭhute and colleages found that when mice receive radiation treatment, the cells that line the inner walls of the blood vessels in the bone marrow produce a protein called semaphorin 3A. When people receive radiation or chemotherapy as part of their cancer treatment, their blood counts plummet. The second discovery by Chute and his team-published in the journal Nature Communications -revealed a mechanism through which the blood vessels in the bone marrow respond to injury, such as from chemotherapy or radiation. But when stem cells that lacked syndecan-2 were transplanted, the cells stopped replicating.īy transplanting only cells that express syndecan-2, it may be possible to make blood stem cell transplants more efficient and less toxic. ![]() When stem cells that express syndecan-2 were transplanted into mice following irradiation, their cells repopulated. The researchers found this protein plays an important role in how hematopoietic stem cells reproduce. This process revealed that hematopoietic stem cells have a high concentration of syndecan-2, which is part of a family of proteins called heparan sulfate proteoglycans, on the cell surface. Termini, PhD, extracted bone marrow cells from adult mice and ran the samples through a device that can detect hundreds of different types of cells based on the proteins that live on their surfaces. To study this phenomenon, investigators at the Chute laboratory led by first author Christina M. This means that when people receive infusions of bone marrow and peripheral blood cells, they get a tiny number of stem cells that are therapeutic along with a lot of other cells that are not. This approach faces a major challenge: Hematopoietic stem cells make up less than 0.01% of cells in the bone marrow and peripheral blood, and there is not yet a good way to separate them from other cells. They are used in the curative treatment of people with leukemia and lymphoma. ![]() These stem cells are of interest to scientists because they produce all blood cells and immune cells in the body. “We show that this protein, syndecan-2, identifies primitive blood stem cells and it regulates stem cell function,” said John Chute, MD, director of the Division of Hematology and Cellular Therapy at Cedars-Sinai and senior author of the study.īlood stem cells are found in small quantities in the bone marrow and in peripheral blood-the type that travels through the heart, arteries, capillaries and veins. In the first study, published in the journal Blood, investigators discovered a protein that is expressed by blood stem cells that could aid in identifying, studying and deploying the cells for treatments. Two recent discoveries by stem cell scientists at Cedars-Sinai may help make cancer treatment more efficient and shorten the time it takes for people to recover from radiation and chemotherapy.
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