A new model showing how sickle cell blood cells operate within bone marrow is presented at a conference in Austria. Researchers at Imperial College London, who developed the model, hope that it will eventually be used by clinicians to advance more effective treatments for sickle cell disease.
This disease causes red blood cells to become misshapen and rigid, meaning that they cannot move as easily around the body as normal flexible red blood cells. When the cells are travelling through tiny vessels, they get stuck and create blockages. This prevents the supply of oxygen to tissue, which leads to severe pain and can cause organ failure.
The model under development at Imperial mimics the movement of oxygen and all the cells in the bone marrow. Ultimately this should make it possible to analyse how the cells would react to different drugs. Examining the living bone marrow that produces blood cells is difficult because currently it can only be looked at through very invasive surgery.
Robin Kumar, who is today presenting a paper about the model at the Biomed 2005 Conference in Innsbruck, says: "Sickle cell disease is a chronic condition, causing a lot of pain, making people prone to infections, and causing them to need regular medical attention. Our model is the first to show the way oxygen is delivered in the bone marrow of people with the disease, with the best representation of the tissue region. It gives a better understanding of the disease's effect on bone marrow and we hope that in due course this will assist in the development of superior drugs to fight the disease."