- Currently, they said that the system that processes the blood cells is manual and takes about 3 weeks.
- Which is faster than the normal red blood cell regeneration which takes about 4 to 6 weeks.
Image: PIXABAY
Blood donations may one day be a thing of the past thanks to the creation of the first functional red blood cells grown in a laboratory.
The team, led by scientists in the United Kingdom, successfully grew red blood cells, an equivalent of a couple of teaspoons, before transferring them to two volunteers.
Normally, red blood cells are formed in the red bone marrow of bones. The spongy tissue is found in the middle of specific bones.
This offers new hope for patients with various disorders such as sickle cell anaemia, rare blood types, as well as other blood disorders that have been affecting people for ages.
The researchers, from the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, NHS trusts and NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), used a manual process after harvesting stem cells from donated blood.
They then stimulated them to expand and grow into large numbers of red blood cells.
“This is the first time we have grown blood cells from an allogeneic donor, and we are excited to see how well the cells perform at the end of the clinical trial,” Ashley Toye, the lead researcher said.
However, the researchers warned that they would only be used under selected circumstances, so there was a need for people to continue donating blood as they do now.
Findings
“The lab-grown blood cells are all fresh and selected to be in the same stage of development, so we expect them to perform better than a similar transfusion of standard donated cells which will have a mixed population of varying ages,” they said.
They hope that if the lab cells last longer in the body, patients may not need blood as often, and that could also reduce potentially hazardous iron overload which occurs from frequent blood transfusions.
Currently, they said that the system that processes the blood cells is manual and takes about 3 weeks. Which is faster than the normal red blood cell regeneration which takes about 4 to 6 weeks.
But they hope to develop an automated system that could routinely produce millions of supplies of lab-grown cells, from blood donations.
"We want to make as much blood as possible in the future, so the vision in my head is a room full of machines producing it continually from a normal blood donation," Toye told BBC.
Tests on the red blood cells suggest that they deliver oxygen just as efficiently as donated red blood cells.
Facts
According to research, red blood cells normally last for around 120 days before they need to be replaced.
A typical blood donation contains a mix of young and old red blood cells, whereas the lab-grown blood is all freshly made and should last the full 120 days.
Scientists have for years tried to develop synthetic red blood cells that mimic the favourable properties of natural ones, such as flexibility, oxygen transport, and long circulation times.
But so far, most artificial red blood cells have had one or a few, but not all, key features of the natural versions.
“Patients who need regular or intermittent blood transfusions may develop antibodies against minor blood groups which makes it harder to find donor blood which can be transfused without the risk of a potentially life-threatening reaction,” Dr Farrukh Shah, medical director of transfusion for NHS Blood and Transplant said.
“This world-leading research lays the groundwork for the manufacture of red blood cells that can safely be used to transfuse people with disorders like sickle cell.”
However, more research is needed to prove that artificial cells could work like normal red cells but only time can tell.