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Medical milestone: Making blood stem cells in the lab
The gradation of pink-to-blue cells illustrates the transition from hemogenic endothelial cells to blood progenitor cells during normal embryonic blood development. Daley, Sugimura and colleagues...
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“Vampires” may have been real people with this blood disorder
Porphyrias, a group of eight known blood disorders, affect the body’s molecular machinery for making heme, which is a component of the oxygen-transporting protein, hemoglobin. When heme binds with...
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Teaching an old drug a new trick to treat an ultra-rare red-blood-cell disease
The National Institutes of Health maintains a library of drugs, the Clinical Collection, that are safe for humans but failed in clinical trials or didn’t make it to the market for other reasons. These...
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A breakthrough in our understanding of how red blood cells develop
Red blood cells. By taking a deep dive into the molecular underpinnings of Diamond-Blackfan anemia, scientists have made a new discovery about what drives the development of mature red blood cells from...
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Zeroing in on the fetal-to-adult hemoglobin switch and a new way to combat...
Normal red blood cell vs. sickle-shaped blood cell. It’s been known for more than 40 years that in rare individuals, lingering production of the fetal form of hemoglobin — the oxygen-transporting...
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Naturally-occurring molecule in tree leaves could treat anemia, other iron...
Hinoki cypress “Without iron, life itself wouldn’t be feasible,” says Barry Paw, MD, PhD. “Iron transport is very important because of the role it plays in oxygen transport in blood, in key metabolic...
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Sickle cell gene therapy to boost fetal hemoglobin: A 70-year timeline of...
Sickled cells occluding a blood vessel. (Image: Elena Hartley) Boston Children’s Hospital is now enrolling patients age 3 to 35 in a clinical trial of gene therapy for sickle cell disease. Based on...
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Why blood stem cells are in our bones: Evolutionary observation may inform...
In normal zebrafish, blood stem cells in the kidney are protected from sunlight by melanocytes. When this layer is stripped away, stem cell numbers go down. (Image and video below courtesy of the Zon...
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Restoring ‘youthful’ hemoglobin in sickle cell disease: First patient is...
Manny Johnson of Boston, 21, previously required monthly blood transfusions to keep his severe sickle cell disease under control. After receiving a new gene therapy treatment, he’s been symptom-free...
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Blood stem cell transplants from any donor, without toxicity?
(ADOBE STOCK) Many blood disorders, immune disorders and metabolic disorders can be cured with a transplant of hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells, also known as bone marrow transplant. But...
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