Vampires get a taste of lab-grown blood

Good news for vampires and patients alike: Scientists in Edinburgh have generated red blood cells directly from bone marrow stem cells in the lab. This alternate source of cells could help the 4.5 million people in the U.S. who need a transfusion each year (from America's Blood Centers, which has many interesting facts about how much blood is needed and how little is donated).

Wired writes:

Professor Marc Turner, who leads the team, believes the blood could be ready for trials in as little as two years, once it's married with research producing artificial haemoglobin -- the protein responsible for transporting oxygen in the blood of vertibrates.

The team are working to produce blood type O-negative, which is good news, as that's the type that 98 percent of us can accept. Because it's essentially manufactured, it would be guaranteed to be free from any viruses and diseases, like HIV, Hepatitis and vCJD (mad cow disease).

The Telegraph quotes Turner, who led the project:

"I think it will probably be two or three years before we get to clinical trials and I would think it will be a decade or so before one sees these kinds of artificial red cells or cultured red cells in routine general practice."

- A.A.

Blood-forming stem cells for Japanese nuclear workers?

According to a story in The Guardian, Japanese officials are considering blood-forming stem cell transplants in workers exposed to high radiation levels. They write:

The proposal has been drawn up as a precautionary measure that could potentially save the lives of workers if they receive high doses of radiation while battling to bring the damaged nuclear reactors under control.

If those transplants take place and are effective, the brave men and women will be part of a story that began with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. People exposed to radiation from those bombs frequently developed leukemias. Investigating those cancers led scientists in Canada to discover cells in the bone marrow that constantly form new blood and immune cells. The leukemias arose when bone marrow stem cells suffered mutations and turned some cells cancerous.

Eventually, scientists used these discoveries to develop bone marrow transplants, in which a person's bone marrow is eliminated by radiation then replaced with donor bone marrow. Blood-forming stem cells within that bone marrow then form a new blood and immune system — presumably one that's cancer-free. CIRM grantee Irv Weissman at Stanford University identified the blood-forming stem cells amidst the many cell types in the bone marrow.

Now, the technique that started with radiation-exposed people in Japan could help the brave men and women who have been exposed while trying to save the nuclear plants damaged during the country's earthquake and tsunami. The idea is that Japanese scientists would freeze blood-forming stem cells from workers, which could then be used to treat those workers if they are exposed.

Although the stored cells could treat blood cancers, some warn that workers might consider the cells a safety net and take unnecessary risks. Stored blood cells wouldn't be able to treat damage to other tissues. The Guardian quotes Robert Peter Gale, a US medical researcher advising the Japanese government:

"These cells can reconstitute bone marrow function; that is not the only target of high dose radiation, they would have damage elsewhere, to their lungs, gastrointenstinal tract and their skin."

He also warns about the logistics of extracting blood-forming stem cells from the roughly 800 workers.

- A.A.

Embryonic stem cells provide limitless source of platelets

A story in yesterday’s L.A. Times highlights a point that I think often gets lost in the brouhaha over adult vs. embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells are great, they really are. That’s why we fund a lot of work with blood, brain, fat and other tissue-specific stem cells (you can see a complete list of those awards here). But they don’t multiply in the lab. That’s why my husband spends two hours donating platelets every few weeks. He donates, hospitals use his platelets, and then he donates more.

Labs can’t multiply donated platelets in the lab, nor can they grow up large quantities of the blood-forming stem cells that produce platelets in the body. If they could, those blood-forming stem cells taken from bone marrow or cord blood could become an endless source of platelets and other mature blood cells.

A great thing about embryonic (or iPS) cells is that you can grow them indefinitely. And when you need more cells, you just take some of those so-called pluripotent cells, differentiate them into your cell type of choice, and voila... differentiated cells. As many as you need.

The L.A. Times story discusses recent work by a team of researchers including some from the company ACT published in the journal Cell Research. They were able to generate large of amounts of platelets from embryonic stem cells. According to the L.A. Times, the cells worked, too:

The researchers reported that the lab-grown platelets were "indistinguishable" from normal blood platelets -- similar in shape and size -- and that they behaved like the real thing, too, helping to form clots in lab dishes and in mice who had sustained injuries to blood vessels. The embryonic stem cell-derived platelets also helped retract clots, the team wrote, another key part of platelets' role in healing wounds.

If this work is effective in humans it could end my husband’s two-hour down-time donating platelets every three weeks, which, truth be told, I think he might actually miss. But it could also mean an end to the chronic problem of platelet shortages in hospitals.

A.A.