Blood donation-ARTIFICIAL BLOOD FROM STEM CELLS!!!

What are Stem Cells?

Stem Cells(SCs) are undifferentiated biological cells that can differentiate into specialized cells. There are the foundation for every organ and tissue in our body and also when they multiply, they can create an organ or a hole living organism.

Hematopoietic SCs are the SCs that give rise to blood cells through the process of haematopoiesis!

Image 1

Artificial blood

Artificial blood can produced in different ways using chemical isolation, recombinant biochemical technology or synthetic production, depenting on the type of the blood.

In a blood donation usually the most important cells are the Red Blood Cells(RBCs), which are responsible for the transportation of oxygen and carbon fioxide throughout the body. Those cells are giving the red colour in our blood and we are going to discuss more for those cells in this article.

Image 2

Researchers have created artificial blood using SCs and it's more efficient for medical use than blood collected from donors.

Patients with rare blood types will benefit the most, as in a lab, it can created unlimited quantity.

Ferthermore, artificial RBCs have advantages over donor blood, as it reduces the risk of infectious disease transmission.

In the past, scientists tried to turn donated SCs straight into mature RBCs. This technique worked but wad inefficient, because each SC can only produce around 50.000 RBCs, before it dies. While 50.000 RBCs sounds a lot, a typical blood bag contains a trillion RBCs, that's why that method was forcing the patient to need more blood. To fix this problem, researchers converted adult SCs into the first line of immortal SCs.

Scientists locked the adult SCs in an early stage of development, so they can divide and create RBC forever without dying.

The perpose is not to replace blood donations, but to provide specific treatment, for specific patient groups, as those whith thalassemia who needs multiple transfusions of blood.

Image 3

As the technology improves and demand increases, wait for this method to become a routine in a few years!

Have a nice day!

Thank you for reading!
@redqueen7

If you like it...

Sources

1)https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematopoietic_stem_cell
2)https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738310/
3)https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14750