Cancer patients to get transfusions of blood made from their own skin

Richard Alleyne- Patients could soon be transfused with blood made from their own skin in a breakthrough that could revolutionise cancer treatments and solve the blood donor shortage.

Scientists have shown that ordinary skin cells can effectively be converted into adult blood cells in the laboratory.

They believe that a two inch square patch of skin – taken from anywhere on the body – could be enough to make enough blood for a full transfusion.

What is more because the blood is made from the patient's own cells, there is no danger of the body rejecting it.

The Canadian team say that the process has been so successful that they could try the treatment in patient within two years.

"There is incredible need here," said Dr Mick Bhatia, who headed the team at McMaster University in Ontario.

"For patients with disease this will be an alternative source of blood that will not be rejected.

"People will effectively become their own donors. We are very excited and very enthusiastic about it.

"There is a lot of work to be done but I would be disappointed if we were not trying it on patients by 2012."

The research, published in Nature, is part of ongoing attempts across the world to revert adult cells back to their original stem cell form.

Stem cells are "master cells" which can be manipulated in a laboratory to become any other cell in the body.

The McMaster team have managed to misses out the "in-between" stage of turning the cells back to stem cells and then converting to blood cells.

Instead the process – which uses various proteins to re-programme the cells and takes a month – converts skin cells straight to blood.

Leukaemia patients are likely to be the first to receive transfusions of perfectly matched blood generated from their own skin. ...

Professor John Hunt, a leading stem cell scientist from the University of Liverpool, said: "I think it's fantastic research, but it's not yet in the clinic and we don't know if these red blood cells are going to carry oxygen. The quantum leap for us all is going to be to get these kind of bench experiments into the patient. ,,,

via Cancer patients to get transfusions of blood made from their own skin - Telegraph. | link

... The discovery began as Dr. Bhatia’s team were trying to create iPS cells from skin. Eva Szabo, a post-doctoral student, noticed one day what looked like blood cells in the dish of skin cells, an observation soon borne out by testing.

The team then manipulated three different types of “factors” - proteins that turn on or off genes within cells - until they could intentionally convert the skin into blood “progenitors” or precursors, which in turn become blood cells. ...

via montrealgazette