Surprise findings about bone marrow transplants could lead to more effective stem cell therapies

We don’t have enough knowledge about the performances of certain compounds of medical therapies as how they actually work. But, they still exist there and provide us relief from excruciating pain and distress caused due to many of the chronic illnesses.

For decades, we have been using the theory of stem cell or bone marrow transplants, which proves effective and also a boon to the development of crucial medical therapies for blood cancers and lymphoma. This treatment procedure has been providing effective outcomes for the patients with the same symptoms, but the pathways were not discovered about how the bone marrow transplant actually works?

We are grateful to the efficient and skilled researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to find a pathway to discover the work process of bone marrow transplant in the body.

Generally, we know that a bone marrow transplant helps a patient revive his life by receiving the stem cells once their stem cells are destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation for certain cancer treatments. In order to infuse stem cells through the transplant, stem cells are derived from the cancer-free blood of the donor, so that these cells can rebuild the entire blood systems, and also the immune systems. This is important for the patients, as the newly developed blood and immune system help them cope with the newly transplanted cells and avoid any further tissue rejection by the immune systems. More often, the incident is not observed in the patients with transplanted cells from the same genetic makeup. Sometimes, it can create problems if it involves unmatched or indifferent stem cells from the donor. However, back in the year 1970’s, we had witnessed a successful transplant using unmatched or without the similar genetic make-up of stem cells.

How The Process Of Bone Marrow Transplant Works?

The science team led by Dr. Hans-Peter-Kiem discovered a new pathway that focuses on the work process of bone marrow once they are transplanted into the body. The team was successful by isolating a certain kind of stem cell which is able to rebuild the entire blood and immune system of the patients after the transplant.

As soon as the discovery has come to the lights, it has raised many hopes for the development of better treatment procedures, including gene editing, gene therapies and effective stem cell transplant.

The discovery showed that three protein compounds which generally make up only five percent of the stem cells play a key role in differentiating the stem cells. It is found that a small subset of blood stem cells uses to contain three different types of proteins such as CD34⁺, CD45RA^-, and CD90 ⁺ that provide their support to do all the work.

After the discovery, Dr. Hans-Peter Kiem was quoted as saying in the press release, “The findings came as a surprise; we had thought that there were multiple types of blood stem cells that take on different roles in rebuilding a blood and immune system. The population does it all”.

The Process Of The Study

Scientists used non-human primates to identify the work process of the specified proteins. They observed the animals after the transplant was done to them over a period of seven years. And they found that the primates have developed the blood and immune systems all over again with the help of transplanted stem cells. And the subset of cells containing those proteins did it all.

Future Hopes

From this finding, we can rebuild a new hope for more advanced and effective stem cell transplant procedures involving only those useful stem cells with three protein compounds. Since the primates share the similar features with humans, we could hope the discovery will work for humans as well one day.