Human Blood Cells Grown

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."

Comments

Gene crossover ?

[purduephotog]

I hope there is at least some study done on whether or not there has been any gene contamination from the mouse cells. There is concern that several of the strains of 'allowed' stem cell lines are already contaminated with mouse DNA and not viable for placement into humans...

Perhaps a Genome project again?

No no.

[Tim]

Our cells will not exchange DNA between themselves, or with cells of other types. Not naturally, anyway.

The concern is that mouse cell lines may be contaminated with viruses that could infect human cell lines. Just like several new strains of flu seem to come out of China every year due to pig/people interactions, this type of contamination could have serious public health implications.