Artificial Bone Marrow Created

Cancer patients and people with suppressed immune systems take note - a team of researchers led by Nicholas Kotov at the University of Michigan has come up with a way to make artificial bone marrow - which carries out its functions outside of the body. The new technology was created by mimicking the lattices found in naturally occurring bone marrow, using a carefully constructed crystalline lattice of artificial polymers.

This new development has many potential applications, from researching the effectiveness and toxicity of new drugs without endangering a patient, to studying immune system responses, and for producing a continuous untainted supply of blood for people needing transfusions. Previous attempts at artificial bone marrow have focused on implantable scaffolds, which present all of the hazards common to any form of invasive surgery. Kotov believes this is the first time an artificial bone marrow for in vitro use has been devised.

The technology offers the promise of making it possible to create a continuous supply of a variety of blood cells, including not only red blood cells, but B cells, which are a major component of a person's response to infections and to certain kinds of cancers. B cell production is often suppressed in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, leaving them open to infections.

Immature B cells, along with macrophages, lymphocytes, and T cells, comprise the immune surveillance system of the body, floating free until they recognize a danger such as a virus, bacteria, or cancer. Once a threat is recognized, B cells are triggered to proliferate and produce antibodies in response to these antigens. B cells play a key role in a person's adaptive immune response since once exposed to a pathogen, they are primed, and cloned, to allow a quicker response to that threat if it occurs again.

"Certain stem cells that are essential for immunity and blood production are able to grow, divide and differentiate efficiently in these scaffolds due to the close similarity of the pores in the scaffold and the pores in actual bone marrow," Kotov said in an interview with the University of Michigan Press.

Kotov's team demonstrated the efficacy of their new technology as a potential agent to help immuno-suppressed people by creating antibodies against New Caledonia/99/H1N1 flu virus, an infectious form of influenza.

Research was conducted at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with significant contributions from researchers at the University of Texas and Shrine Burns Hospital, Galveston.