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

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.