ALL STEM CELLS

Artificial blood trial using stem cells in UK

— 2015-07-03

The big challenge is scaling up the technology to generate enough artificial cells for a transfusion.

Source : New Scientist July 2015
The UK National Health Service has announced plans to start transfusing people with artificial blood by 2017 – the first clinical trials of this kind anywhere in the world. Such blood substitutes aim to replicate real blood’s ability to supply oxygen to tissues, and several types are being developed worldwide. Rather than using synthetic versions of oxygen-binding molecules, the NHS trial aims to use real red blood cells that have been generated in the lab from stem cells.
In the past, researchers have managed to take hematopoietic stem cells from bone marrow and encourage them to grow into red blood cells using chemical growth factors, and the NHS is likely to use a similar approach. But producing enough for a regular sized transfusion could be tricky.
When Luc Douay at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France, and his colleagues performed the first small human transfusion of such lab-grown red blood cells in 2011, each volunteer received only 2 millilitres of synthetic blood. Douay said at the time that the big challenge would be scaling up the technology to generate enough artificial cells for a regular transfusion.
The NHS also has plans to explore using blood from umbilical cords, which is another source of hematopoietic stem cells. It may contain fewer of these cells than bone marrow, but could be more plentiful in supply.

Why the need for artificial blood

The trial’s announcement follows news that the number of new volunteers giving blood fell by 40 percent in England and North Wales last year. Because of this decline, the UK NHS says alternative supplies could become increasingly vital for its day-to-day operations. Artificial blood might also be an effective way of helping people with rarer blood types, for whom compatible donors are particularly thin on the ground.