The potential for understanding how the biological setting that sustains blood-forming stem cells is involved in normal and disease physiology promises new approaches to treating blood disorders. Defining niche components and how they work together to regulate blood formation provides the opportunity to not only improve regeneration following injury or blood-forming stem cell transplantation, but also to understand how disordered niche function could contribute to disease.
Sean Morrison, Ph.D., Director of the Children’s Research Institute at UT Southwestern, has co-authored an evaluation of research on the blood-forming stem cell niche in bone marrow — the primary environment for the cells’ maintenance and self-renewal — bringing past discoveries into context and looking ahead to questions that still need to be addressed. Read the
Read the research review published in Nature.
