Blood made from stem cells may end reliance on donations
BLOOD donors may no longer be needed in the future after scientists showed that it was possible to create blood from stem cells.
The 20-year project could pave the way for the creation of an unlimited number of blood and immune cells for transplants, simply by reprogramming a patient’s own skin cells.
The research holds enormous promise for developing personalised treatments for blood disorders, drug-screening and for reducing shortages of donated blood.
Dr Ryohichi Sugimura, of Boston Children’s Hospital, said: “This gives us the potential to have a limitless supply of blood stem cells and blood by taking cells from universal donors. This could potentially augment the blood supply for patients who need transfusions.”
He added: “This step opens up an opportunity to take cells from patients with genetic blood disorders, use gene editing to correct their genetic defect and make functional blood cells.”
The breakthrough could benefit patients receiving treatment for cancer, blood disorders, after accidents, during surgery, or following blood loss in childbirth.
But NHS Blood and Transplant – the service that collects, tests and processes blood for hospitals throughout England – said that while hospitals have enough blood to treat patients there is still a need for more donors.
In England the number of people giving blood for the first time dropped by 24.4 per cent in 2015 compared with 2005. Since human embryonic stem cells were isolated in 1998, scientists have been trying with little success to use them to make blood-forming stem cells.
In the new research, reported in the journal Nature, the Boston team started with embryonic stem cells and exposed them to a chemical soup that triggered their transformation into a tissue which eventually makes blood stem cells.
When the tissue was transplanted in mice, new blood cells were created.
“This work is the culmination of over 20 years of striving,” said Dr George Daley, who heads a research lab in Boston Children’s Hospital’s stem cell programme and is dean of Harvard Medical School. “We’re tantalisingly close to generating bona fide human blood stem cells in a dish.”
Another team, also writing in Nature, succeeded in making blood cells using a different technique.
The scientists, led by Dr Shahin Rafii, from Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, converted cells lining blood vessels into immature blood stem cells, which then finished developing after being transplanted on to a layer of umbilical cord tissue.