Nguyen Lab Discovered a Distinct Class of Stem Cells Develop from Yellow Bone Marrow in Humans
The laboratory of vascular surgeon-scientist Tammy Nguyen, MD, PhD, is focused on understanding why people with diabetes have a difficult time with wound healing, particularly foot wounds. She often performs surgeries on people with diabetes who have developed uncontrolled infections resulting in amputations. Dr. Nguyen is interested in discovering why people with diabetes are prone to infection.
All immune cells originate in our bone marrow as pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells. That is where immune cells are produced and multiply before traveling throughout the body by way of blood.
Dr. Nguyen has developed a novel method in collaboration with Dr. Silvia Corvera’s lab to collect human stem cells directly from the bone marrow of people who underwent lower extremity amputations for non-healing wounds and grow them in her lab. Her research is examining why the immune cells of people living with diabetes behave differently than those without diabetes.
“I’m looking at the origin of immune cells from older adults who have been living with diabetes to observe how that has changed their stem cells,” said Dr. Nguyen.
In a newly published study on bioRxiv, she identified that there are two different types of stem cell populations that are located within separate parts of bone marrow in the human leg. “Compared to working with mice, human bones are obviously much larger, allowing us to sample and study different parts of the marrow,” she said. “Never before have we been able to characterize or understand stem cells derived from different parts of bone. We are the first to remove them, grow them out and examine them.”
So far Dr. Nguyen has learned that stem cells derived from yellow/fatty marrow proliferate more and are more responsive. Currently she is asking additional questions in her lab to compare the marrow and immune cell development between people living with diabetes and those without diabetes.
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