Another Medical Breakthrough From Canada

Lowbed · Nov 7, 2010

Scientists turn skin into blood cells

Sun Nov 7, 1:07 PM

By Sheryl Ubelacker, Health Reporter, The Canadian Press

TORONTO - In a scientific feat that almost defies imagination, Canadian researchers have transformed human skin into different types of blood cells.

The achievement by McMaster University scientists is being hailed as a breakthrough that could one day help patients needing transfusions for surgery, to treat potentially deadly blood disorders or to offset the destructive side-effects of chemotherapy.

But it also raises the possibility that other cell types, such as neurons to repair brains damaged by disease or injury, could also be directly induced and grown in the lab using a mere scrap of a person's own skin.

Principal investigator Mick Bhatia, scientific director of McMaster's Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, said his team was able to produce oxygen-carrying red blood cells, two kinds of immune cells and the cells that produce platelets needed for clotting.

"We have shown this works using human skin," Bhatia said. "We know how it works and believe we can even improve on the process."

What's significant about the research, published online Sunday in the journal Nature, is that the scientists were able to coax mature blood cells from skin without the intermediate step of producing stem cells that would then need to be differentiated into the various blood cell types.

While blood cells could be derived from both embryonic stem cells and what are known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, the process is far more complicated and time-consuming, as well as being fraught with potential safety problems.
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http://www.brandonsun.com/national/...l-new-transfusion-source-106852073.html?thx=y

deloFranco · Mar 2, 2011

good to hear this, hope it follows through.

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