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

I can see the paranoid rallying cry now

[rknop]

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

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?

Re:Can there be a shortage if they reproduce?

[dragons_flight]

Stem cells do have the ability to continue reproducing themselves (for longer than we've ever studied if not indefinitely). The problem is that they don't grow especially fast and they are notoriously fragile. If they don't have the right nutrients, temperature, pH, etc. they will die. If each stem cell line could be coaxed into being a huge vat of cells then we'd have no shortage (except possibly too little genetic diversity amongst lines). More typically it occupies the space equivalent to a few petri dishes.

Regarding federal funding, no researchers have that yet. Bush opened up the process to allow stem cell research to be considered (subject to his restrictions). It won't be until sometime next year when the requisite government bodies start approving projects and handing out money. The process itself typically takes several months to complete.

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.