Recently, a leukemia-stroma co-culture system was used to screen for inhibition of stem cell properties, and identified 155 small-molecule compounds, including an HMGCR inhibitor, lovastatin, which preferentially inhibited leukemia stem cells (LSC) in vitro while sparing normal hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. The gene discussed is HMGCR; the disease is leukemia.