Main Category: Lymphoma / Leukemia / Myeloma
Also Included In: Stem Cell Research
Article Date: 31 Jul 2013 – 0:00 PDT
Mary, Queen. “Key to acute myeloid leukaemia could be ‘sleeping stem cells’.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 31 Jul. 2013. Web.
31 Jul. 2013. <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/264104.php>
Queen Mary, University of London
Dr David Taussig, from the Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary, University of London, who led the research, said: “The widely accepted explanation has held that AML causes bone marrow failure by depleting the bone marrow of normal haematopoietic stem cells by killing or displacing them.
The findings were confirmed by the analysis of bone marrow from 16 patients with AML.
Scientists studying an aggressive form of leukaemia have discovered that rather than displacing healthy stem cells in the bone marrow as previously believed, the cancer is putting them to sleep to prevent them forming new blood cells.
The scientists studied the levels of haematopoietic stem cells (HSC) in the bone marrow of mice transplanted with human AML. They found the numbers of normal mouse HSCs stayed the same, however what did change was that the HSCs were no longer going through the stages of development which finally results in the formation of new blood cells.
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‘Acute myeloid leukaemia does not deplete normal hematopoietic stem cells but induces cytopenias by impeding their differentiation’, by Miraki-Moud et al. is published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Normally, the bone marrow produces haematopoietic stem cells which mature into “adult” blood cells. In people with AML the bone marrow is invaded by leukaemic myeloid cells which aren’t able to develop into normal functioning blood cells.
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The finding offers the potential that these stem cells could somehow be turned back on, offering a new form of treatment for the condition, called Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML). The work was led by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London with the support of Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute.
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