Lab-made bone marrow can help fight diseases
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Biomedical research is always pushing the boundaries as we advance our knowledge of how our bodies work and what happens to them when things go wrong that result in disease. A recent advance is the ability of scientists to create and grow small versions of human organs in the lab. These miniature organs are called organoids, and they work like real human organs. This makes them great models for studying disease. Organoids have been developed for the human intestine, brain, kidney and lungs. Recent reports describe a new organoid system that models human bone marrow.
What do you know about your bone marrow? Probably not a lot. This is the spongy center of our bones. There are two different types of bone marrow: red and white. Red bone marrow has stem cells that become red blood cells. You may remember that red blood cells carry oxygen throughout your body. White marrow produces white blood cells, which make up our immune system. As you can imagine, the bone marrow is critically important. It plays a role in normal healthy bodies and helps us fight disease. It can also be the source of blood diseases and, of course, different cancers.
Recently, scientists from Oxford University and the University of Birmingham have created organoids in the lab that have many of the features of bone marrow. The scientists started with human pluripotent stem cells. These are stem cells that are capable of growing into any cell in the human body. Using an array of chemical signals, the scientists made the cells grow into the different specialized cells and structures of human bone marrow. This included the cells that provide structural support, the tissue that creates blood cells and the blood vessels. This was all done in specialized cell culture plates in the lab.
Once they grew the organoids, the scientists looked at them using multiple high-powered imaging techniques and molecular analysis. Remarkably, the organoids looked just like normal bone marrow in a live human. Stem cells grew into the different cells of the bone marrow, organized themselves into their usual architectural structures and did their normal cellular activities. For all of these things to happen, the cells had to have the right mix of different cell types in the right structure, and the cells all had to communicate with each other.
The end result was a lab-grown bone marrow organoid that looked and functioned like normal human bone marrow. The organoid contained blood vessels, and it could produce different blood cells. The model also allowed the growth of cancerous types of blood cells that have been a challenge to grow or maintain in the lab.
This organoid model can now be used as a convenient and inexpensive lab-based model to study different problems and cancers that occur in the bone marrow. It also provides a great way to study blood cancers and possible medications and treatments, so hopefully, we will soon have a better understanding of some of our most deadly human cancers.
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Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 2:45 am