Stem Cell Niche Discovered in the Placenta

From the original article, stem cells like the legendary Peter Pan, has the quality of refusing to grow up and commit to a particular path in the placenta. The cell needs a niche where they can grow and divide without being nudged along the path of commitment and that if they are taken out of their safe harbors they die or turn into different cell types. If scientists could ever understand these niches they could possibly duplicate these niches in culture with use of binocular biological microscopes and other latest medical equipments.

Hannah Mikda and Stuart Orkin, according to the original text, solve that riddle by studying the kinetics of blood stem cell populations in a mouse embryo with the use of binocular biological microscope. The binocular biological microscope shows a formation of a large pool of stem cells in the placenta for three days and a majority of them eventually collect in the fetal liver.

They actually identified the stem cell sites through graphics and images of a mouse embryo during fetal development as well as with the use of binocular biological microscope. The research further suggested that the placenta has a stem cell-promoting properties that could be applied in cell cultivation for bone marrow transplantation.

According to Mikkola, instructor in pediatrics, the bone marrow in adults is the factory for making blood cells but such fancy microenvironments is not ready in the early fetal life of an embryo so that the fetus finds a suitable place for growth. First blood cells to form are red cells mode in the embryonic sac, stem cells follow. During the development in mice, two sites dad been detected the Hematopoietic stem cells : Aorta-gonad-mesonephros (AGM) region and later the fetal liver where stem cells accumulated for transfer to the bone marrow by the time of birth. But doubts have risen as to how the liver’s stockpile could burgeon from a few cells in AGM or where the missing stem cells could be. One idea is that they are hiding in the placenta. Laboratory studies with the use of binocular biological microscope suggest that mammalian placenta may harbor undifferentiated blood cells but still remained uncertain.

Other studies from the original article show that stem cells have no recognizable form but could be verified by their function through transplantation method even with the use of binocular biological microscopes. Mikkola and co-worker were able to quantify stem cell populations and formed a pool of cells in the placenta to 2 t0 3 days and disappeared as liver supply expands. Whether they were born in the placenta and nurtured there or from the circulation is still a subject of study.