This week a paper came out in Science Translational Medicine that describes the use of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells to treat Friedrich's Ataxia. Once they differentiate into mature microglia (see in yellow), they can actually transfer proteins that are missing in Friedrich's Ataxia to the host's cells. They also differentiate into other cells in other parts of the body to deliver these rescue proteins as well. Pretty amazing stuff. I made this image for the Cherqui Lab at UCSD, the authors of the study, and you can see the image (for now anyway) as the second in the scrolling banner images on both the Science Translational Medicine and Science homepages:
