Every day, millions of people end up in hospitals from some accident or another. Depending on the severity of the injury, the patient may or may not need a blood transfusion. Hospitals use hundreds of gallons of blood a day in order to meet the demand for blood transfusions. More often than not, there ends up being a shortage of certain blood types; people must then donate more blood to meet this demand and the hospital must hope that the donors have the correct blood types. As you can see, this cycle is extremely inefficient. Luckily, this cycle may end in the future.
Professor Marc Turner and his team of researchers have created a way to manufacture red blood cells. “Production of blood on an industrial scale could become a reality once a trial is conducted in which artificial blood made from human stem cells is tested in patients for the first time.” This is the latest breakthrough in what some people are calling “bio-hacking”, a term that describes things like 3D printed bones and prosthetic limbs. Dr. Turner has developed a technique that creates red blood cells from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). iPS cells are cells that have been taken from adult humans and “rewound” into stem cells, which can then be turned into any kind of cell given the correct conditions. “Biochemical conditions similar to those in the human body are then recreated to induce the iPS cells to mature into red blood cells – of the rare universal blood type O-.” O- is the universal donor so now if this process of creating red blood cells works, hospitals won’t have to worry about getting enough of certain blood types. Because of the safety standards, hospitals also won’t have to worry about receiving infected blood that carry diseases.
“‘Although similar research has been conducted elsewhere, this is the first time anybody has manufactured blood to the appropriate quality and safety standards for transfusion into a human being,’ said Prof Turner.” If everything goes as planned, the trials will conclude in late 2016 or early 2017.
But this technique isn’t without problems. Currently, a huge problem faced by Dr. Turner is the cost of creating the blood. The current system of donating blood makes the blood free of cost. Turner’s method will “cost approximately £120 (approximately $202) to transfuse a single unit of blood” but more than 2 million units of blood are transfused in the UK alone each year. Most of the cost stems from the need to keep the process 100% sterile. The cost also means that Turner’s method isn’t replicable on an industrial scale. However, “if Prof Turner’s technique is scaled up efficiently, it could substantially reduce costs.” Although current results do look promising, “Dr. Ted Bianco, Director of Technology Transfer at the Wellcome Trust, said, ‘one should not underestimate the challenge of translating the science into routine procedures for the clinic.'” Although “blood factories” still remain the stuff of fiction, there is hope that some day in the future Turner’s method of creating blood will become viable.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10765132/Artificial-blood-will-be-manufactured-in-factories.html