Researchers Successfully Perform First Injection of Cultured Red Blood Cells in Human Donor

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2011) — For the first time, researchers have successfully injected cultured red blood cells (cRBCs) created from human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) into a human donor, according to study results published inBlood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). As the global need for blood continues to increase while the number of blood donors is decreasing, these study results provide hope that one day patients in need of a blood transfusion might become their own donors.
French scientists took hematopoietic stem cells (HSC’s; the adult stem cells that form all blood cells) from a human donor and from those cells, generated billions of “cultured red blood cells” (cRBC’s) in the laboratory. They first tested the function of the cells by injection into mice, showing that the lab-generated cells were able to mature fully.
Then they took adult stem cells from a human volunteer donor, made more cells in the lab, and injected ten billion cells back into the human donor. The cells survived and functioned comparable to normal red blood cells.
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