Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York suggest that collecting cells for bone marrow transplantation should be done in the evening. They base this recommendation on the finding that humans typically have more blood stem cells in their circulating blood late in the day than at other times.
In February, the team, led by Paul Frenette, reported that circadian clock genes influence the movement of blood stem cells between the bone marrow and the blood in mice. Blood stem cells in humans, they now find, also show these rhythmic fluctuations, although at opposite times of day from mice.
The quotidian pattern of stem-cell levels in the blood was not disrupted in the bones of donors who were injected with a drug called AMD3100 that mobilizes blood stem cells out of the bone marrow. So, the authors reason, harvesting cells in the evening might be the best way to maximize the number collected for transplantation.
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Molecular biology: It's all in the timing. Nature 455, 839 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/455839a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/455839a
