Artificial blood stem cells were created in an Australian lab
Making blood from stem cells
Researchers from Australia created blood from stem cells. This discovery will be very useful in addressing needs in blood transfusions, but also in personalized treatments of leukemia and other bone marrow disorders. All 3 blood cell lines, red, white and platelets, were created from stem cells.The creation of the blood relied on artificial or induced pluripotent stem cell technology, whereby cells are taken from a patient, usually skin fibroblasts, and these are reprogrammed and returned to the embryonic stem cell stage. These embryonic stem cells are then differentiated in hematopoietic stem cells, which are given to patients to treat malignant blood diseases. In this way, the search for compatible donors is no longer required, the transplants will be autologous and the risk of rejection disappears. In addition, the patient will receive his own blood when he needs transfusion, and there will be no need to search for blood donors, especially for rare blood groups. These human hematopoietic stem cells were tested in immunodeficient animals and complete hematopoiesis and bone marrow recovery were observed. These stem cells can also be frozen and thawed in fully functional form. With this method, banks of autologous hematopoietic stem cells are created, ready to deal with malignancy or transfusion needs in the patient himself, without having to operate public-allogeneic stem cell banks or blood banks. Many of the children who need hematopoietic stem cells for the treatment of leukemia, despite the search, cannot find in a short time compatible stem cells to perform the transplantation. Despite the laboratory ascertainment histocompatibility the foreign graft can attack the patient's own tissues, leading to serious illness or death. The chance of rejection can be as high as 50%, and the development of personalized, patient-specific blood stem cells will prevent these complications, address donor shortages, and at the same time, through gene therapies, cure patients with hereditary diseases. In the coming years, it is expected that the safety studies of the use of these artificial stem cells, which are developed in the laboratory, will begin, which are of particular importance, because there is an intervention in the genome. If the safety of the method is finally proven, many hereditary and degenerative diseases will be treated with the use of artificial stem cells.The creation of artificial stem cells arose from the need to use stem cells at older ages and from the fact that many children have not saved their stem cells at birth. From the birth stem cells, artificial stem cells are created, such as the above, and the safety of their use is even greater, because the intervention in the genome is limited and safe.