The ability to make human blood in the lab including all the different types of cells in them has taken one giant leap.
A team of researchers led by University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell scientist Igor Slukvin have cracked the elusive code to turn stem cells into human blood. They discovered two genetic programs responsible for taking stem cells and turning them into both red and white cells that make up human blood.
The method developed can produce blood cells in abundance. For every million stem cells the researchers were able to produce 30 million blood cells.
The factors identified by Slukvin’s group were capable of making the range of human blood cells including white blood cells, red blood cells and megakaryocytes commonly used blood products.
