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Scientists Turn Skin Into Blood

Posted by samzenpus on from the horror-movie dept.

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."

2 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. How much skin to make a pint of blood? by jomegat · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Just how much skin does it take to make a pint of blood? I would think a lot, but not having read the article, I wouldn't know.

    Seems to me they invented the reverse of the process that's really needed. It's a lot harder to get enough skin for grafting than it is to get blood for transfusions. Wouldn't blood-to-skin be a better conversion?

    --

    In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not.

  2. Re:Another Nail... by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Both sides of that argument had a lot of wrong impressions and misunderstandings. Using embryonic stem cells wan't directly about treatment, it was about research, there were properties that they wanted to understand. The biomedical community needed to learn how they work so that that knowledge can be used as a baseline to compare treatments. Interviewees on Science Friday did a pretty good job of explaining what they were looking for and why embryonic stem cells were desired for research. As for treatment though, I don't think ESC were ever going to be used in treatments except for very limited trials.