Cancer patients receiving intensive chemo- or radiotherapy cannot produce sufficient numbers of neutrophils, key players of the first line of defence against invading microbes, and severe, uncontrollable infections lead to a diminished quality and loss of life. Currently, there is no cell therapy available to effectively treat the loss of neutrophils in patients.
Impact
We have developed a method to grow large quantities of functional neutrophils from stem cells in the laboratory which can be cryopreserved, overcoming the main problems of insuffient supply and an extremely short shelf-life of cells that hamper the application of neutrophils as a cell therapy.
reNEW research
Thus far, we could show that our lab grown neutrophils have a similar make-up and function in the dish as those found in the blood stream and are working towards validating their safety and ability to fight infections.
Image description
Activated neutrophils can expel their DNA (green) to form a sticky net-like structure that can trap and immobilise microbes. These NETs (or neutrophil extracellular traps) also bind proteins that aid in the killing of pathogens, in this case LTF, which is binding iron molecules that bacteria need to grow. LTF is marked in grey when bound to DNA, or magenta when in contained in cell compartments.
Credits
Dr Jana Hagen, Senior Research Officer, Elefanty Lab, reNEW Melbourne.
