UC Merced’s Professor Joel Spencer and his team developed a way of capturing an image of blood stem cells or image of blood stem cells inside their niche in the bone marrow.
“Everyone knew black holes existed, but it took until last year to directly capture an image of one,” Spencer said. “It’s analogous with stem cells in the bone marrow. Until now, our understanding of HSCs has been limited by the inability to directly visualize them in their native environment.”
Seeing and understanding
For years, scientists struggled to create the proper environment, or niche, for stem cells. The niche provides a precise microenvironment that protects stem cells and enables long‑term self‑renewal. This renewal supports the repair of damaged tissues and organs.
Different stem cells require different niches. Each niche depends on a mix of physical and chemical cues, and getting that mix right has been difficult. These challenges have slowed our progress in developing stem‑cell‑based therapies.
In the past, studying HSCs involved transplanting them into a mouse or other animal that had undergone radiation to kill off its own bone marrow cells. It enabled researchers to track the HSCs but clearly the new environment was very different than the original, natural one. So, Spencer and his team developed new microscopes and imaging techniques to study cells and tissues in their natural environment.
In the study, published in the journal Nature, Spencer says all this is only possible because of recent technological breakthroughs.
“My lab is seeking to answer biological questions that were impossible until the advancements in technology we have seen in the past couple decades. You need to be able to peer inside an organ, inside a live animal and see what’s happening as it happens.”
Being able to see how these cells behave in their natural environment may help researchers learn how to recreate that environment in the lab, and help them develop new and more effective ways of using those cells to repair damaged tissues and organs.
“This work brings an advancement that will open doors to understanding how these cells work which may lead to better therapeutics for hematologic disorders including cancer.”Using stem cells for therapy requires more than choosing the right cells. You must also understand the environment they need. Growing stem cells in the wrong setting is like trying to breed sheep in a pond. It won’t work.
