A one-hour protein soak keeps transplant stem cells young

Bone-marrow transplants live or die by how well donated stem cells survive lab handling. Researchers in Zurich and California gave human blood stem cells a single one-hour bath in a protein called activated protein C — and the cells slipped into a rested, protected state that sailed through processing. In mice, the soaked cells produced more blood and kept working through repeated transplants. A simple hour-long step, published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, could lift the odds for transplant patients and gene therapies for blood disorders.