Researchers from EMBL, the University Medical Center Mainz (UMC Mainz), and the Department of Biomedicine (Basel) have uncovered how chronic inflammation reshapes the human bone marrow environment, where blood stem cells reside, long before leukaemia emerges.

In a new study published in Nature Communications, scientists explain how they studied bone marrow samples in individuals with clonal hematopoiesis (CHIP) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), observing how inflammation played a role in a cancerous progression. 

CHIP and MDS patients lose certain healthy stem-cell support cells, which are replaced by inflammatory support cells that become more common as the disease progresses, forming a self-reinforcing inflammatory loop that disrupts normal blood formation.

Overall, the research suggests that inflammatory support cells in the stem cell microenvironment play a key role in damaging the bone marrow early in disease development – potentially offering a new target for treatments that could stop blood disorders from becoming cancerous.

Our body’s “blood factory” consists of specialized tissue made up of bone cells, blood vessels, nerves and other cell types. Now, researchers have succeeded for the first time in recreating this cellular complexity in the laboratory using only human cells. The novel system could reduce the need for animal experiments for many applications.