Stem cells are the building blocks of life and, for many diseases, they may hold the key to a successful cure. They possess remarkable properties, as they are capable of dividing indefinitely and forming new cells. The crux of the matter, however, is that close or distant relatives do not always have to be genetic twins. That is why large-scale typing campaigns, such as the one taking place on 6 May 2026 at the University of Graz, help to collect the data and feed it into a globally accessible network. Marion Mußbacher from the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences explains exactly what this involves.
Why are stem cells such valuable all-rounders?
Stem cells can renew themselves and transform into a wide variety of cell types, such as blood cells and muscle cells. Stem cells are like blank sheets of paper from which many different products (newspapers, novels, leaflets) can be made. They are important for healing damaged organs and forming new cells. Example: The blood stem cells of a healthy person produce several million blood cells (red and white blood cells, platelets) every minute, and they do so throughout our entire lives.
What do they do in the body? Why do we need them to combat certain diseases?
Many cells in our body have a short lifespan and therefore need to be replaced frequently. These include blood cells, skin cells and cells of our intestinal mucosa, which are formed by different types of stem cells. In principle, our body was built from stem cells during embryonic development. Stem cell donations are primarily used in cases of serious diseases of the haematopoietic system or the bone marrow, such as blood cancer (leukaemia) or lymphomas. In these conditions, abnormal blood cells (cancer cells) multiply rapidly and thus displace healthy blood cells in the bone marrow that we need for oxygen transport (red blood cells/erythrocytes), the immune system (white blood cells/leukocytes) and blood clotting (platelets/thrombocytes).
And why don’t my stem cells match a distant relative of mine, but might match someone in the USA to whom I am certainly not related?
Whether a donor is suitable or not depends on the match of certain surface markers (HLA matching). Although these surface markers are inherited from one’s parents, the combination is purely random. Even among siblings, the probability of a complete match is only around 25 per cent. The lower the degree of kinship, the less likely a match is, and the more chance determines whether a match occurs.
How does the human body work and how can we decode its genetic code? What helps in the treatment of diseases? And what will the medicines of the future look like? These and many other questions are addressed by scientific studies at the University of Graz within the ‘Health and Fitness’ research focus. Apply now!