Stem cells could allow "blood farms," company says
Tue Aug 19, 2008 3:37pm EDT
Stem cells could allow "blood farms," company says
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Embryonic stem cells can be used to grow vats
of red blood cells, which could lead to the creation of "farms" that
could provide limitless sources of blood, U.S. researchers reported
on Tuesday.
The team at Massachusetts-
finding might help save the struggling company, which is desperately
seeking investors to keep it afloat.
"I think it's really a big break for us," said Dr. Robert Lanza,
scientific director of the company, one of a few commercial ventures
trying to make a business out of the emerging stem cell field.
Stem cells are the body's master cells, replenishing various cells
and tissues as they die. Stem cells taken from days-old embryos are
especially powerful, with the ability to produce any cell type.
Doctors hope to some day use them to provide tailor-made transplants
for patients, and to study disease. One problem is that the immune
system may reject tissues grown from someone else's stem cells.
Red blood cells may be an exception to this, because they do not have
a nucleus, Lanza and colleagues at the University of Illinois at
Chicago and the Mayo Clinic reported. "You don't have to worry about
the DNA going haywire," he said.
What Lanza envisions is growing batches of cells from human embryos
possessing all the different blood types: A, B, O and AB, as well as
negative and positive Rh versions of each.
O negative, considered "universal" because it can be transfused
safely into anyone possessing any of the other types, would be the
most desirable, Lanza said.
The researchers first coaxed embryonic stem cells into
differentiating into blood precursor cells, and then found a way to
get them to go down the road of becoming erythrocytes -- the red
blood cells that carry oxygen through the body.
The cells carried oxygen correctly and appeared capable of delivering
it to tissue, they reported.
"We can currently generate up to a 100 billion red blood cells from a
single six-well plate of stem cells," Lanza said.
The U.S. federal government strictly limits its funding of embryonic
stem cell research because of controversies over the use of human
embryos.
Lanza said his team was now trying to make blood cells using induced
pluripotent stem cells -- a new source of stem cells made using
ordinary skin cells and several genes that re-program them back to an
embryonic-like state.
But funding for such research is hard to come by, Lanza said.
"Right now, it's tough," said Lanza, whose company is down to 12
employees. "For a while we had the phones off. It's tough going but
the people who are here, we believe in this and we are riding it out."
(Editing by Julie Steenhuysen)
http://www.reuters.
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StemCells subscribers may also be interested in these sites:
Children's Neurobiological Solutions
http://www.CNSfoundation.org/
Cord Blood Registry
http://www.CordBlood.com/at.cgi?a=150123
The CNS Healing Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNS_Healing
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