Lab-grown bone marrow may unlock personalized blood cancer treatments

By using stem cells as a starting point, scientists have managed to produce lab-grown versions of an impressive array of human body parts. The list so far includes brains, blood vessels and lungs, and is growing rapidly, with these miniaturized models serving as next-gen research tools to study disease and develop drugs that can improve outcomes for patients.

Scientists at Oxford University and the University of Birmingham are now claiming another first in this area. The team took human stem cells and grew them in a purpose-built 3D scaffold designed to drive their maturation into the key cell types you’d find in living human bone marrow.

“Remarkably, we found that the cells in their bone marrow organoids resemble real bone marrow cells not just in terms of their activity and function, but also in their architectural relationships – the cell types ‘self-organize’ and arrange themselves within the organoids just like they do in human bone marrow in the body,” said first author of the study Dr Abdullah Khan.

These are described as the first bone marrow organoids to include all the key components of human bone marrow, and because bone marrow serves as the production house for circulating blood cells, the organoids are already providing valuable insights.

The organoids could offer important new insights into the development of blood cancer. The scientists were able to use them to keep cancer cells from blood cancer patients alive in the lab, which has historically been a challenge. This raises the prospect of developing customized treatments that are designed for specific patients, using their own cancer cells as a starting point.

Image source: A. Khan, University of Birmingham.