Protagonist or antagonist? The complex roles of retinoids in the regulation of hematopoietic stem cells and their specification from pluripotent stem cells

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are multipotent cells responsible for the maintenance of the hematopoietic system throughout an individual's life, creating billions of new red blood cells every day [1]. Homeostasis requires maintaining a precise balance between sustaining the HSC population via self-renewal, cell death decisions via apoptosis or senescence and differentiation into increasingly mature progenitors that can give rise to all blood cell lineages [2]. Dysregulation of the careful balance between these cell fate decisions can have deleterious consequences, such as bone marrow failure due to insufficient self-renewal of HSCs and/or production of mature progeny, or leukemias due to a block in differentiation, loss of cell death decisions and/or increased proliferation.

Source: Experimental Hematology - July 4, 2018 Category: Hematology Authors: Clea S. Grace, Hanna K.A. Mikkola, Diana R. Dou, Vincenzo Calvanese, Roger E. Ronn, Louise E. Purton Tags: Review Source Type: research