In our bodies, blood stem cells are found in the bone marrow which can be donated to patients in need of a transplant. We can now make personalised blood stem cells in the laboratory, addressing donor shortage and mismatch issues in stem cell transplants. To further our research, we aim to recreate the bone marrow in a dish, where lab grown stem cells can live and mature.
Impact
The ability to recreate bone marrow in a dish is crucial to study how blood stem cells are able to live in our body for our whole lives. This would both serve as a model to study diseases like bone marrow failures, while providing an environment where lab grown blood stem cells can be housed before transplants. Ultimately, both avenues will help advance treatments for blood diseases.
reNEW research
In a world first, our laboratory has developed a method to generate blood stem cells from human donors. Further work focuses on improving the efficiency of blood stem cell generation, and understanding the functional maturation of these stem cells. By modelling the bone marrow niche in the dish, we can begin to uncover the maturation events between early embryonic period and birth.
Image description
Blood stem cell factories (purple/orange swirl) are grown together with cartilage like cells (blue/green) to recreate the bone marrow niche where blood stem cells (purple/orange dots) can live.
Credits
Ritika Saxena, PhD Student, Elizabeth Ng, PI, Elefanty/Ng labs, reNEW Melbourne.
