Question: why do you use bone marrow stem cells for skin??

Jayne Charnock answered on 15 Mar 2011:

Excellent question teddyhunter!

It seems really strange doesnt it- to use bone marrow cells for healing skin! But infact that is exactly what the body itself does. When you get a cut, the wound cells send out SOS signals asking for ‘back-up’. Stem cells from the bone marrow respond and make their way to the cut. At some point on the way or when they arrive at the wound they become different subsets- some that will fight any infection (leukocytes or ‘white blood cells’) and others that will help patch up the wound (mesenchymal stem cells) and form new blood vessels (endothelial progenitor cells). Some of the cells like the leukocytes will leave or die once their job is done, other stick around forming the new tissue like the mesenchymal stem cells.

The problem with people who have diabetes, for some reason the cells dont get the right signals to tell them what to do or what to become. The leukocytes hang around too long and forget to leave. This keeps the wound open and stops it passing into the ‘healing’ stages. In my lab we are trying to work out why and how we can get the cells to behave better!

Seems weird doesnt it, but bones are more exciting than they first appear!