Literature Scan
New and noteworthy research from the
medical literature landscape
A Zebrafish and
Enhanced Imaging
Captures How Blood
Stem Cells Take Root
A research team from Boston Children Hospital’s Stem Cell Research
Program has provided the first direct
glimpse into how blood stem cells
take root in the body to generate
blood – with the help of a seethrough zebrafish and direct visualization. The dynamic imaging system
offers several clues for improving
bone-marrow transplants in patients
with cancer, severe immune deficiencies, and blood disorders, and for
helping those transplants thrive.
“Our direct visualization gives us a
series of steps to target, and in theory
we can look for drugs that affect
every step of that process,” said senior
investigator, Leonard Zon, MD,
director of the Stem Cell Research
Program and professor of stem cell
and regenerative biology at Harvard
Medical School.
Using time-lapse imaging of naturally transparent zebrafish embryos
and “tagging” the stem cells green,
researchers were able to reveal how
stem cells find the “niche” where they
begin to create blood in the body’s
circulation. On arrival in its niche,
the newborn blood stem cell attaches
itself to the blood vessel wall where
chemical signals prompt it to squeeze
itself through the wall and into a
space just outside the blood vessel.
A still from the animation, illustrating the process of “endothelial cuddling.