英语科普小知识 白细胞对控制红细胞数量起关键作用.docVIP

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have found that?macrophages（巨噬细胞）?-- white blood cells that play a key role in the immune response -- also help to both produce and eliminate the bodys red blood cells (RBCs). The findings could lead to novel therapies for diseases or conditions in which the red blood cell production is thrown out of balance. The study, conducted in mice, is published today in the online edition of the journal Nature Medicine. ? Our findings offer?intriguing（有趣的）?new insights into how the body maintains a healthy balance of red blood cells, said study leader Paul Frenette, M.D., professor of medicine and of cell biology and director of the Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Research at Einstein. Weve shown that macrophages in the bone marrow and the?spleen（脾脏）?nurture the production of new red blood cells at the same time that they clear aging red blood cells from the circulation. This understanding may ultimately help us to devise new therapies for conditions that lead to abnormal RBC counts, such as hemolytic?anemia（溶血性贫血）, polycythemia vera, and acute blood loss, plus aid recovery from chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation. Einstein has filed a joint patent application with Mount Sinai related to this research, which is currently available for licensing and further commercialization. ? Previous studies, all done in the laboratory, had suggested that macrophages in the bone marrow act as nurse cells for erythroblasts, which are RBC precursors. But just how these erythroblastic islands (macrophages surrounded by erythroblasts) function in living animals was unclear. ? A few years ago, Andrew Chow, a Mount Sinai M.D./Ph.D. student in the laboratories of Drs. Frenette, and Miriam Merad, M.D., Ph.D., professor of oncological sciences and immunology at Mount Sinai found that bone marrow macrophages express a cel