Stem cells – a key to faster blood formation and blood cancer treatments

Many serious diseases and medical therapies can cause a life-threatening drop in the number of blood platelets. Sten Eirik W. Jacobsen has discovered a new type of blood stem cell that quickly and exclusively forms blood platelets, and as a Wallenberg Scholar, he aims to investigate its role in order to enable more efficacious treatments to be developed.

Blood stem cells are the rare cells in the bone marrow that are essential to the production of all vital blood cells that the body needs. Forming blood cells from stem cells is a time-consuming and complex process. 

Professor Sten Eirik W. Jacobsen and his research group recently identified a type of blood stem cell that is specialised in quickly and exclusively producing platelets.

As a Wallenberg Scholar, Professor Jacobsen and his research group will now study the role of these newly discovered stem cells and their path to mature blood platelets in normal healthy mice and in mice subjected to therapies that reduce the number of blood platelets, such as chemotherapy and therapies that resemble bleeding. 

The aim of their research is to identify mechanisms able to quickly boost the formation of blood platelets so that they can be used to treat different serious conditions that arise during interventions such as chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation.

Another important aspect of their research is its potential to highlight the mechanisms driving blood cancer. Many types of blood cancer originate in these rare blood stem cells, which are often resistant to different therapies. By studying what characterises the cancer stem cells, their research can contribute to the development of more specific and effective treatment methods. 

The researchers also want to investigate if the blood cancer stem cells are essential for  sustaining the blood cancer. 

“It would mean that eliminating these cancer stem cells would be necessary and sufficient for curing the cancer,” he says.