Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health announced this week that they discovered an event that controls the production of blood stem cells.

According to a release, the event implies a sequence called +9.5 within a gene that eventually leads to stem cell production. Researchers deleted the +9.5 sequence in embryonic mice, which in turn deprived the mice of the stem cells required to produce blood.

“The +9.5 site is essential to generate the stem cells that form adult blood cells,” Emery Bresnick, director of the UW Blood Research Program, said in a statement. “Gaining a clear mechanistic insight into how this process is regulated will almost certainly provide new opportunities for targeting blood cancers.”

The team’s findings were published last month in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.