It may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but scientists now believe they can transform human skin cells into blood cells. That means getting a blood transfusion as part of surgery or to treat cancer could be as simple as borrowing a patch of skin off your own body.
Canadian researchers at the Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute at McMaster University in Ontario have made the major step of reprogramming human skin cells into blood cells. Their research was published in the most recent issue of Nature. Up until now, scientists have been focusing research on the conversion of embryonic stem cells into blood. But those efforts have been problematic, both because it's difficult to turn the stem cells into mature cells that can be transplanted into adults and because of the controversy over the use of embryonic stem cells in research as well as their finite availability.
The research team in Canada, however, has found a way to bypass all these concerns by using growth factors that can reprogram skin cells into blood cells, allowing for the development of adult blood cells for immediate transplant. They successfully changed skin cells into blood cells several times over the course of two years, using human skin from old as well as young patients.
Dr. Andre Terzic, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, has read the new study and is excited by the research.
"I think the whole field of reprogramming ordinary tissue is truly state-of-the-art technology," he told AOL Health. "This field has a lot of potential applications." Terzic says the Canadian research could lead to better and more immediate treatments for blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma as well as for bone marrow transplant.
Terzic says the research is especially exciting because it allows for an unlimited supply of blood cells for treating disease.
"The fundamental work has been done," he says. "It will take a significant amount of time to develop and validate this research and then put it into practice, "Terzic adds, "but this is clearly the decade of cellular programming."
The Canadian team expects clinical trials to begin as soon as 2012.
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