PIO team turns skin to blood cells
Toronto, Nov. 8: In a major breakthrough in medical sciences, an Indo-Canadian researcher and his team successfully transformed human skin into various blood cells.
The breakthrough is likely to pave the way for revolution in the treatment of patients needing blood transfusions and those suffering from blood disorders.
Mr Mike Bhatia said he and his team at Canada’s McMaster University at Hamilton have successfully used human skin to produce red bloods cells, two kinds of immune cells and the cells that produce platelets needed in clotting.
Mr Bhatia, who heads McMaster University’s Stem Cell and cancer Research Institute, told the Canadian Press, “We know how it works and believe we can even improve on the process.” It will also pave the way to produce transplant tissues without ever making the controversial embryonic stem cells first. The breakthrough will also cheer cancer patients whose blood systems (blood cells) are badly affected by chemotherapy.
It also throws up the exciting possibility of brain neurons being harvested in lab from a mere patch of one’s own skin to repair damage to brain caused by accidents or diseases.
The new technique will one day lessen the burden on blood banks as this process can reportedly create enough blood from one’s own skin for transfusions.
Though blood cells can be derived from embryonic stem cells and what are known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, this process is far more complicated and time-consuming, the Canadian Press quoted Mr Bhatia as saying. Moreover, blood cells derived from embryonic cells and iPS cells can be foetal — not mature adult cells — with properties that make them unsuitable for transfusion, said Mr Bhatia.
But the new skin-to-blood cell technique will carry no such dangers, he explained.
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