Helen Blau, PhD, the Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Professor of Pharmacology, had previously shown that transplanted bone marrow cells can wind their way up to the brain in humans where they take on characteristics of Purkinje cells - large cells in the part of the brain that controls muscular movement and balance. She had also shown that mature cells in a lab dish can fuse with other cell types and take on characteristics of those cells.
In her most recent work, published in the Oct. 16 advance online issue of Nature Cell Biology, Blau showed that the bone marrow cells in mice fuse with existing Purkinje cells and activate genes normally made in Purkinje cell nuclei. The work will also be published in the November issue of the journal.
"I think that fusion might be a really important biological mechanism," Blau said. She said researchers previously considered fusion to be less medically important than the idea that bone marrow cells may be able to change fates entirely. Blau disagrees with that assessment. "Fusion might be a sophisticated mechanism for rescuing complex damaged cells," she said.
Blau and senior research scientist James Weimann, PhD, transplanted mice with bone marrow cells that had been genetically altered to produce a fluorescent green protein. Over the course of the next 18 months (75 percent of a mouse's life span), they looked for signs of fluorescent green cells in the animals' brains.
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Contact: Amy Adams
amyadams@stanford.edu
650-723-3900
Stanford University Medical Center
15-Oct-2003