In 2000, researchers working in drosophilia - fruit flies - verified the hypothesis. In their letter to Nature, Scadden, postdoctoral fellow Cristina Lo Celso, Charles P. Lin, of MGH's Wellman Center for Photomedicine, and colleagues, describe tracking single stem cells transplanted into living mice. Scadden, a hematologist-oncologist who provides cancer patients with bone marrow transplants - which are blood stem cell transplants - said "we inject cells into a vein, and some of them find their way to where they need to end up, but we need to know what happens to them. And more important," he said, "we need to discover what we can do to increase the efficiency of the process, to make sure that the stem cells 'take' and thrive." Now, said Scadden, "we can actually watch the cells divide; we can see the process by which cells engraft, and regenerate the bone marrow." The most exciting thing coming from this work, Scadden said, is that we know there are drugs that improve stem cells getting to where they need to go and drugs that appear to stimulate the successful establishment of the transplanted stem cells. The next step, he said, is working with those drugs in clinical trials in marrow transplant patients.

(Source: David Scadden, Cristina Lo Celso, Charles Lin, HSCI and MGH)