research - apoptosis

From: andrew
Date: 12/24/2003
Time: 4:26:20 PM
Remote Name: 62.252.44.195

Comments

I just received a newsletter from the Apastic Anaemia Trust (UK organisation) with the following information from St George's Hospital, London:-

"In all of us, cell numbers are controlled by a process called apoptosis in which unwanted cells die. When this process fails, cells grow out of control, as in cancer. At St George's, we have studied apoptosis in normal and AA bone marrow stem cells, and we have demonstrated increased cell death by apoptosis in AA stem cells, which is clearly one of the major underlying causes of the disease.

In addition we have shown there are fewer stem cells available, and which do not function normally when grown in cell culture.

In very recent work we have shown there to be a small population of normally functioning stem cells present in the pool of AA stem cells, which may be responsible for the reconstitution of marrow after immunosuppression with ATG.

Future work to expand this subpopulation of cells may offer the possibility of a new therapeutic approach to the treatment of AA."

Sounds like progress to me, but the best thing I draw from this is confirmation that the marrow can re-constitute itself - which is I guess what is happening to those of us who have had this thing for a while and are slowly recovering. Maybe the speed of recovery depends on how many of the normally functioning stem cells you have left after the auto-immune attack. Seems to me if you have at least some left, maybe only a very small percentage, then over time they can gradually re-build the marrow.

Anyway I thought it was worth sharing with you.

Have a good Christmas and New Year.

Andrew