Researchers have generated blood stem cells and also blood progenitor cells (shown) from human pluripotent stem cells.RIO SUGIMURATwo teams of scientists have generated blood stem cells by reprogramming either human or mouse cells. In both cases, these hematopoietic stem cells successfully produced blood cells when implanted into mice.
“This is important work,” Igor Slukvin of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health told The Scientist. Both studies advance scientists’ understanding of the pathways and cell signaling used to generate blood stem cells, he said. The studies were published today (May 17) in Nature.
In one study, George Daley of Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and colleagues used chemical signals to coax human pluripotent stem cells into becoming an embryonic tissue, called hemogenic endothelium. In the embryo, this tissue eventually turns into blood stem cells. Next, the team tested 26 transcription factor genes and found seven, ERG, HOXA5, HOXA9, HOXA10, LCOR, RUNX1, and SPI1, that pushed the hemogenic endothelium toward a blood-stem-cell state.
When the investigators transplanted the cells ...
