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Stem cells

Valine starvation leads to a hungry niche

Nature volume 541, pages 166–167 (2017)Cite this article

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The haematopoietic stem cells that rejuvenate blood depend on a dietary source of the amino acid valine — a finding that has been exploited to reduce the toxicity of bone-marrow transplantation in mice.

Bone-marrow transplantation is the definitive treatment for many disorders of blood and blood-derived cells, because haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) that reside in niches within the bone marrow can rejuvenate every blood-cell lineage. Before a transplant, recipients typically receive chemoradiation, a conditioning treatment involving chemotherapy with or without total-body irradiation. This treatment eliminates diseased HSCs, clears bone-marrow niches to render them receptive to donor HSCs, and dampens the immune system to prevent donor-cell rejection. But conditioning can cause profound immunosuppression, tissue damage and even death, and produces long-term side effects such as infertility. Writing in Science, Taya et al.1 report that the simple elimination of the amino acid valine from the diets of healthy mice leads to depletion of native HSCs, pointing to a less toxic way to condition the body for bone-marrow transplantation.

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Figure 1: Reducing toxicity in bone-marrow transplantation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. R. Grant Rowe and George Q. Daley are in the Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, Boston Children's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.,

    R. Grant Rowe & George Q. Daley

  2. G.Q.D. is also at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston.,

    George Q. Daley

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  1. R. Grant Rowe
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  2. George Q. Daley
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Correspondence to George Q. Daley.

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Rowe, R., Daley, G. Valine starvation leads to a hungry niche. Nature 541, 166–167 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21106

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