Thursday, researchers revealed that a new drug cocktail using Genzyme Corporation’s Mozobil could result in prompting bone marrow to release extra adult stem cells into the bloodstream in order to repair the heart and broken bones.

A study performed on mice increased researchers’ hopes of maybe coming to be able to use the combo as a new approach to autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, which entails that the body mistakes healthy tissues for foreign substances and therefore attacks itself.

Stem cells are the body’s major cells, creating different tissues and also the blood and are found all throughout the organs, blood and tissue.

Sara Rankin of Imperial College London, who led the study, stated that the discovery of the drug cocktail could give rise to new treatments to fight various diseases and injuries, by mobilizing a person’s own stem cells from within.

Rankin, along with her team, looked at mesenchymal stem cells, which are immature cells that can create bone, muscle or blood vessels, and endothelial ones that help give rise to blood vessels in the heart.

After having treated healthy mice with one of two proteins that occur naturally in bone marrow called VEGF and G-CSF growth factor, they gave the rodents Mozobil, Genzyme’s stem-cell transplantation drug.

The study, whose findings were published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, showed that mice that had received VEGF and Mozobil released approximately 100 times as many endothelial and mesenchymal stem cells into the bloodstream, compared to the rodents that had not undergone any treatment.