Lab-grown blood given to people in world-first clinical trial
At the moment, there are only three units of the “Bombay” blood group – first identified in India – in stock across the whole of the UK.
So how is the blood grown?
The research project combines teams in Bristol, Cambridge, London and at NHS Blood and Transplant. It focuses on the red blood cells that carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body.
- They start with a normal donation of a pint of blood (around 470ml)
- Magnetic beads are used to fish out flexible stem cells that are capable of becoming a red blood cell
- These stem cells are encouraged to grow in large numbers in the labs
- And are then guided to become red blood cells
The process takes about three weeks and an initial pool of around half a million stem cells results in 50 billion red blood cells.
These are filtered down to get around 15 billion red blood cells that are at the right stage of development to transplant.
“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,” Prof Toye told me.
