Scientists Turn Skin Into Blood

Breakthru writes "In an important breakthrough, scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin. The discovery, published in the prestigious science journal Nature today, could mean that in the foreseeable future people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of other blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012."

Comments

Re:How much blood can "a patch of skin" provide?

[ColdWetDog]

Oops, sorry, a real link.

Re:Just one minor complication.

[Lucky75]

From what I read in other articles not posted on slashdot, something like a 12x12 cm patch of skin is enough to create enough blood for a transfusion. That's about the same amount removed during normal grafting operations.

Link

Re:How much skin to make a pint of blood?

[Kurofuneparry]

A good question. The backwards conversion is impossible because the vast majority of blood cells are RBCs (Red Blood Cells or erythrocytes) and these have gotten rid of their nucleus, making them a cellular dead end doomed to destruction in about 120 days.

Also, blood is mostly free water (plasma) and when RBCs are created their progenitor cells divide many times in the production process. Assuming that this process they're using is similar, you're talking about impressive volume multiplication in the conversion from skin to blood.

Then again.... I'm an idiot .....