Making blood from skin cells

In an important breakthrough, Canadian scientists have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin, allowing transfusions that are genetically identical.

The discovery could mean that in the foreseeable future people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of other blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions. The breakthrough means that embryonic stem cells don’t need to be used, avoiding the social and scientific difficulties surround that process. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012.

Mick Bhatia, scientific director of McMaster University’s Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and his team of researchers have also shown that the conversion is direct. Making blood from skin does not require the middle step of changing a skin stem cell into a pluripotent stem cell that could make many other types of human cells, then turning it into a blood stem cell.

"We have shown this works using human skin. We know how it works and believe we can even improve on the process," said Bhatia. "We’ll now go on to work on developing other types of human cell types from skin, as we already have encouraging evidence."

The discovery was replicated several times over two years using human skin from both young and old people to prove it works for any age of person.

Source: McMaster University

Image: McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute stem cell isolation expert, Marilyne Levadoux-Martin, operating the FACS Aria II, a high-speed cell sorter used to isolate human stem cells