Eight years ago, two former Stanford University postdoctoral fellows, one of them still in California and the other at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) in Cambridge, began exchanging theories about why patients with leukemia stop producing healthy blood cells. What was it, they asked, that caused bone marrow to stop producing normal blood-producing cells?... Read more about Cross-country collaboration leads to new model of leukemia development

Starting with a discovery in zebrafish in 2007, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have published initial results of a Phase Ib human clinical trial of a therapeutic that has the potential to improve the success of blood stem cell transplantation. This milestone, just nine short years after Harvard’s major commitment to stem cell biology, once again demonstrates the ability of HSCI investigators to carry a discovery from the lab bench to the clinic—fulfilling the promise on which the Institute was founded.... Read more about HSCI publishes clinical trial results for therapeutic that amplifies blood stem cells

A bone drug already on the market for osteoporosis may kill chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) stem cells thought to persist in the bone marrow after standard therapy, lowering the likelihood of disease recurrence, according to a new study in mice led by researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), the Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, and Massachusetts General Hospital.... Read more about Bone drug kills resistant cancer stem cells by making home unlivable

Using a difficult laboratory technique, HSCI physician-researchers have isolated genetically healthy stem cells from patients with Pearson Marrow Pancreas Syndrome (PS), a generally fatal infant blood disorder with less than a hundred reported cases worldwide. Children with PS experience a range of symptoms, most notably: anemia,...