The placental origin of HSCs

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are generated in the placenta, before the circulatory system is fully operational, researchers report is this week's issue of linkurl:Cell Stem Cell.;http://www.cellstemcell.com/ The finding offers researchers a better shot at defining the microenvironment required to grow HSCs in vitro. Researchers have known that the placenta holds a reserve of HSCs, and had observed that when placental HSCs decline in number, the liver's reserve expands. Here, Katrin Rhodes at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and colleagues, showed that the placenta produces HSCs de novo, rather than simply acting as a "HSC kindergarten," said Hanna Mikkola from UCLA, the principal investigator of the study. In the past, it had been difficult to determine the exact location of HSC generation, because blood circulation begins at the same stage of development that HSCs appear. The researchers used a knockout mouse that lacks a heart beat and the ability to circulate blood in order to capture HSC formation before blood flow confused the picture. They then stained for surface molecules of developing HSCs, which revealed two different HSC areas in the placenta, one that generated HSCs de novo, and another where HSCs replicated. These results have important implications for patients, because appropriate bone marrow donors are hard to find, and the alternative, cord blood, yields a relatively low number of HSCs. Only fetal HSCs replicate into more HSCs, whereas adult HSCs differentiate into the different blood cell lineages. By learning more about the linkurl:microenvironments;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23272/ that nurture different stages of the HSC life-cycle, researchers hope to reproduce the signals that push HSCs into a self-regenerating program for therapy.

The placental origin of HSCs

The Scientist ARCHIVES

Become a Member of

Meet the Author

Edyta Zielinska

Related Research Resources

Study Confirms Safety of Genetically Modified T Cells

Research Resources

Podcasts

Webinars

Videos

Infographics

eBooks

TaqMan Probe & Assays: Unveil What's Possible Together

Meet Aunty and Tackle Protein Stability Questions in Research and Development

Detecting Residual Cell Line-Derived DNA with Droplet Digital PCR

Making Real-Time PCR More Straightforward

Products

Product News

Biotium Launches New Phalloidin Conjugates with Extended F-actin Staining Stability for Greater Imaging Flexibility

Latest AI software simplifies image analysis and speeds up insights for scientists

BioSkryb Genomics and Tecan introduce a single-cell multiomics workflow for sequencing-ready libraries in under ten hours

Agilent BioTek Cytation C10 Confocal Imaging Reader