“Latest Stem Cells News”

British scientists have created human red blood cells from spare embryonic stem cells, a major breakthrough they claim could soon pave the way for production of synthetic ‘O-negative‘ blood for medical transfusions.

The red blood cells have been produced from stem cells from spare IVF embryos as part of a three-billion-pound project to develop an alternative source of O-negative blood, the universal donor group which can be transfused into people without fear of rejection, ‘The Independent’ reported.

In their research, the scientists used more than a 100 spare embryos left over from treatment at fertility clinics to establish several embryonic stem cell “lines“. A line, RC-7, was transformed into blood stem cells before being converted into red cells containing oxygen-carrying haemoglobin.

Prof Marc Turner, the Director of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service in Edinburgh and leader of the project, said that synthetic blood made on an industrial scale would overcome the problem of blood shortages and risk of transmitting new infections between donors and recipients. “We’ve proved the principle that from these embryonic stem cell lines we can generate red blood cells.

“At the end of this three-year period we would envisage generating up to one unit (a pint) of red cells from embryonic stem cells at clinical grade which fulfil all the in vitro characteristics of red cells,” Prof Turner was quoted as saying.

A blood sample databank under the China Marrow Donor Program (CMDP), was officially established Monday at Zhongguancun of Beijing.
The new databank is now the largest for Chinese people in the world, according to Hong Junling, deputy head of CMDP management center.

The databank includes information such as the names and gender of nearly one million donors and information about to which ethnic groups the donors come from, Hong said.
It also covers such medical information as blood types, gene types and health status of the donors.

The CMDP, launched in 2001 by the Red Cross Society of China, aims to help millions of Chinese with blood diseases.
But Hong said the blood sample databank could help genetic analysis for major diseases other than blood diseases.

The blood sample databank has collected 970,000 samples and provided more than 1,200 patients with haematogenous stem cells, including 50-odd cases from abroad, according to Hong.
The number of samples is expected to reach one million by 2010.

It’s a doctor’s dream — an unlimited supply of disease-free blood.
And it may not be the stuff of fiction for long, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.
Someone in the United States needs blood every two seconds. In surgery, on cancer words, on the nation’s battlefields — blood transfusions save lives.
But in the U.S., demand often exceeds supply. And elsewhere, especially in the developing world, there’s a real chance the blood cud be contaminated with diseases such as AIDS or Hepatitis C.

Enter Dr. Marc Turner, a cell biologist from Scotland who received a multi-million dollar research grant to try to make blood in his lab from human stem cells.
“These cells are being generated from human embryonic stem cells, which themselves are generated from three-to-five-day-old human embryos,” Turner says.
Palmer explains that stem cells can be coaxed, theoretically, to grow into any human body part.