How aging changes the blood system

A few stem cells, or “clones”, outcompete their neighbours and gradually take over blood production

23-May-2025 - The reservoir of blood stem cells shrinks with age. It becomes increasingly dominated by stem cells that produce immune cells associated with chronic inflammation. Almost all of the 60-year-olds studied show this change. Researchers from the Centre for Genomic Regulation and the Institute for ...

Donating blood saves lives – but what long-term effects does this practice have on our bodies?

Frequent blood donations promote the regeneration of blood cells through genetic adaptation

13-Mar-2025 - Researchers from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the HI-STEM stem cell institute and the German Red Cross Blood Donor Service, among others, have now discovered that frequent blood donations cause genetic adaptations in blood stem cells that promote the regeneration of blood ...

Epigenetic changes reprogram astrocytes into brain stem cells

Discovery shows that astrocytes could potentially be used in regenerative medicine to replace damaged nerve cells

09-Sep-2024 - Resting brain stem cells hardly differ from normal astrocytes, which support the nerve cells in the brain. How can almost identical cells perform such different functions? The key lies in the methylation of their genetic material, which gives these special astrocytes stem cell properties. ...

Phagocytes from the culture dish for cancer therapy

"Our induced phagocytes have the potential to destroy cancer cells in therapeutic applications by devouring them"

13-Jun-2024 - Cell-based cancer therapies often fail nowadaystoday because the immune cells are unable to penetrate the tumor efficiently. The use of certain phagocytes is considered a promising alternative - but until now it has not been possible to grow them in sufficient quantities in the culture dish. ...

Intestinal stem cells drive age-related inflammation

Chronic inflammation is a hallmark of ageing tissues, especially the intestines

22-Dec-2023 - Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have now shown in mice that ageing intestinal stem cells are key drivers of inflammation. They produce an important recognition molecule for T cells of the immune system, which in turn stimulate the process even further with their ...

Blood stem cells: not in charge in an emergency!

How the body protects our blood stem cells from exhaustion

19-Jan-2023 - After infections or blood loss, the body must compensate for the loss of blood cells as quickly as possible. This has long been considered the task of the hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow. But scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have now discovered in mice that a ...

Epigenetic emergency switch improves defense against infections

13-Dec-2022 - During infections, the hematopoietic system switches from normal to emergency mode. This improves the defense against the pathogens. Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have now found an epigenetic switch in blood stem cells and progenitor ...

New single-cell analysis of leucemic stem cells

New method to distinguish between cancer stem cells, mature cancer cells and healthy tissue stem cells

23-Mar-2021 - A new method allows stem cells and cancer stem cells to be studied at the single cell level and the resulting cell clones to be traced directly. The method was developed by scientists from the Stem Cell Institute HI-STEM, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), the European Molecular Biology ...

Induced pluripotent stem cells reveal causes of disease

Using single-cell analyses, researchers systematically searched for correlations between individual genetic variants in induced pluripotent stem cells

08-Mar-2021 - Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) are suitable for discovering the genes that underly complex and also rare genetic diseases. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), together with international partners, have studied ...

New technology provides insight into the development of immune cells

Barcode system enables researchers to follow which development path the cells take at the same time as identifying which genes are actively transcribed as messenger RNAs

14-Aug-2020 - The entire range of our blood and immune cells are derived from hematopoietic stem cells. Yet which genes influence how they develop into the different cell types? Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have now developed a new technology to answer this question. A genetic ...