Stanford Scientists Isolate Progenitor Stem Cell of All Blood Cells

On Wednesday, the Stanford University Medical Center announced that scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have isolated a human blood cell, called the multipotent progenitor, which is the first offspring of the heavily studied blood-forming stem cell that resides in the bone marrow and engenders all of the cells in human blood.

Isolating the multipotent progenitor -- long since understood in mice -- fills in an important gap in the human blood cell family tree. Studies in mice are never a perfect substitute for understanding those same cells in people, according to Ravindra Majeti, MD, PhD.

The discovery may lead to new treatments for blood cancers and other blood diseases and allow for easy and effective bone marrow transplants. Bone marrow transplants are the oldest practiced form of "stem cell therapy".

This same stem cell is thought to give rise to acute myelogenous leukemia after a number of mutations. It must be destroyed in order to cure the disease.

"We can compare the leukemic stem cell to this progenitor cell and from that find out what makes the leukemic stem cell different," said Irving Weissman, MD, director of Stanford's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine.

Researchers from Japan and Madison, Wisconsin recently announced a major research breakthrough that allows scientists to stimulate adult human skin cells to act just like human embryonic stem cells. This technique negates the need for using human embryos or cloned mixes of human and animal DNA. This has been hailed as nearly miraculous news, because the new technique does away with the ethical problems that so many people, including some stem cell scientists, have with the creation and destruction of embryonic human life.

That ethical dilemma had created much friction between the main political parties in the United States and between religious people "secularists".

Many see stem cell therapy as a virtual miracle cure for a great many diseases, and it may also be a technique for significantly extending longevity, as aging cells that are slowly losing their ability to replicate as their telomeres diminish are replaced with young cells coaxed into existence from stem cells.

Multipotent stem cells, like the one that has just been isolated by the Stanford scientists, are stem cells that can give rise only to a limited range of different cells-in this case, blood cells. Their main function is to replenish lost cells that are destroyed by diseases or the body's exposure to the environment.

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