Thursday, November 11, 2010

Skin to Blood

Hey, bio nerds.  I have some interesting news for you today!  Researchers from Ontario, Canada may be able to turn human skin into blood cells.  What does this mean?  It means that doing operations like blood transfusions will be infinitely easier because of this technology.

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.

This is exciting for everybody, especially the bio nerds.  Breakthroughs like this in science will help us live better and longer.

26 comments:

  1. such a great read dude
    awesome blog btw :-)

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  2. helth science is amazing

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  3. well so doctors will peel you like an orange to create blood for you hahaha

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  4. Great post. Hopefully this will take the place of stem cell research...

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  5. i'm actually a bio nerd :)
    very interesting article indeed!

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  6. Thats pretty crazy stuff. The world is moving so fast.

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  7. good info, will look forward to the next one

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  8. what a interesting post..great blog you have dude...follow

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  9. lol careful you don't spill this stuff on you while you're working with a patient though or you'll melt!

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  10. And this is why I'm proud to be a biomedical analyst!

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  11. Thats pretty neat, wonder if it would work on fresh cadavers?

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  12. well thats great news!

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  13. I love medical science articles! I wrote one a few days back.
    This is some amazing stuff!

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  14. Now all they need is a cure for cancer... Just saying lol

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