Stem cells found to home toward the injured liver

The now recognized plasticity of stem cells challenges researchers to further define the mechanisms responsible for their recruitment and differentiation, so that they may ultimately become clinically useful in the repair of injured organs.

In the July 15 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, a collaborative research team led by Tsvee Lapidot and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and also including researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, Institut Pasteur in Paris, and the Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Israel, have reported a study that greatly contributes to our understanding of how hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) home to injured liver tissue and contribute to tissue repair. The authors reveal that migration of HSCs to the liver is a selective, non-random event, requiring the expression of the signaling chemokine SDF-1 and the receptor CXCR4. The pathways that facilitate crosstalk between HSCs and injured liver tissue may serve as targets for future therapeutic protocols in the field of liver regeneration and transplantation.

TITLE: HGF, SDF-1, and MMP-9 are involved in stress-induced human CD34+ stem cell recruitment to the liver

AUTHOR CONTACT:
Tsvee Lapidot
The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Phone: 972-8-934-2481
Fax: 972-8-934 -4141
Email: Tsvee.Lapidot@weizmann.ac.il

View the PDF of this article at: http://www.jci.org/cgi/content/full/112/2/160

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