Med School, BCH nearing cell fabrication breakthrough
Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital have, for the first time, generated blood-forming stem cells in the lab using pluripotent stem cells, which can make virtually every cell type in the body. The advance, published today in the journal Nature, opens new avenues for research into the root causes of blood diseases and ways to create immune-matched blood cells, derived from patients’ own cells, for treatment purposes. “We’re tantalizingly close to generating bona fide human blood stem cells in a dish,” said senior investigator George Daley, who heads a research lab in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Stem Cell Program and is dean of Harvard Medical School. “This work is the culmination of over 20 years of striving.” Although the cells made from the pluripotent stem cells are a mix of true blood stem cells and other cells known as blood progenitor cells, they are capable of generating multiple types of human blood cells when...