New treatments to amplify the success of cord blood and bone marrow transplants in humans could be developed thanks to a new discovery related to zebrafish. Blood-forming stem cell production is enhanced due to a natural chemical that is produced by the fish.
The finding was published in the June 21, 2007 issue of the journal Nature. At the Children’s Hospital in Boston, Leonard Zon, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, led the team. The lead author of the study was a postdoctoral fellow in Zon’s laboratory named Trisha North.
