Boosting Production of White Blood Cells

 

In the 1960s, Prof. Leo Sachs developed the first ever procedure to grow, clone and induce the development of different types of normal blood cells in a laboratory dish. Using this process he discovered and identified a family of proteins, among them colony-stimulating factors, that control blood cell production in its various stages.

 

 

One of the proteins that Sachs identified, the granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, is now used to boost the production of disease-fighting white blood cells in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.