Successful Bone Marrow Transplants

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Researchers have identified a gene in bone marrow cells which may be the key to successful bone marrow transplants in patients with blood diseases like leukemia, multiple myeloma, and myelodysplasia.
A study from researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Boston Children's Hospital looked at mice lacking a gene in bone marrow cells which coded a specific enzyme. These mice could not form a healthy bone marrow microenvironment, which is key to successful bone marrow transplants, but researchers found that cells transplanted into the mice could form the healthy microenvironment. Researchers believe that eliminating this gene in bone marrow cells in humans could destroy the unhealthy cells and allow them to be replaced with the healthy transplanted cells.
For more information, go to: http://www.cell.com/developmental-cell/retrieve/pii/S1534580713002451
SOURCE: Developmental Cell, May 2013