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Human Blood Cells Grown

Posted by michael on from the vampires-rejoice dept.

exceed writes: "MSNBC has an interesting article on researchers that have developed the first human blood cells by growing embryonic stem cells in a culture containing mouse tissue which encouraged development of blood cells. The result, they report, was cell colonies that 'appear identical to those produced from human bone marrow cells.' Similar work has been done like this with mice, but this is the first time human blood cells have been developed from embryonic stem cells."

3 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. I can see the paranoid rallying cry now by rknop · · Score: 5, Funny

    Evil Stem Cell Researchers Work to Stop Red Cross Blood Drives!!

    ...followed by a long set of statistics about how many lives blood drives have saved and about how awful it will be if they stop happening, or even become less common.

    -Rob

  2. Blood types by Darth+Paul · · Score: 2, Funny
    Wow, Mr Landsteiner was truly ahead of his time when he named the blood types after their origins.

    Type A = Altruist
    Type B = Born with it
    Type O = Official laboratory
    Type AB = Abortion By-product

    And coming soon to a blood bank near you ...

    Type M = Mouse
    Type S = Sheep
    Type G = Monkey
    Type Yin-Yang = Various other animals of the Chinese Zodiac

  3. What about the mice? by elliotj · · Score: 2, Funny

    Not to diminish the importance of this achievement, but I was wondering how far along we are with the development of mouse blood cells from human tissue?

    Humans have been donating blood for years, but very few mice donate blood because they can't read. I think they'd like to, but they can never tell where the clinics are or what hours they'll be open. It seems reasonable therefore for the focus to be on creating synthetic mouse blood first.

    I'm sure that if they mice out there could read this, they'd agree.