[nerual]

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/ar...lood-from-skin

Dr Mick Bhatia's lab has discovered a way to make ADULT WBCs, RBCs and platelets--that is, the key components of blood--directly from adult human skin cells! This huge leap forward completely eliminates the middle step of creating stem cells that are then coaxed into other cells. When the previous method was used, it only created fetal blood cells, which are not very useful to adult patients, and these cells had a high propensity to become cancerous. All of the testing done so far indicates that blood cells produced by this new method are indistinguishable from normal blood cells.

The full article was published online today in Nature, one of the highest-impact science journals out there!

so i guess getting swabbed the other day was a complete waste of time.. awesome that such groundbreaking research is happening at Mac though.

Moar links:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/1011....2010.588.html
http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/main/news/new..._to_blood.html

Originally Posted by Connor_92

so i guess getting swabbed the other day was a complete waste of time.. awesome that such groundbreaking research is happening at Mac though.

This is only the beginning. A lot of further testing has to be done to make sure that these blood cells won`t have any adverse effects. Afterall, these were only tested in mice (but with human blood cells - not sure how that works). There`s still clinical trials and what not. But anyway, something like this won`t be implement for at least another 5-10 years.
Interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXL68SFxc4M

Thats pretty cool, I think Dr.Bhatia came and spoke at one of my bio lectures, hes a pretty smart guy


Yay, one more step to the defeat of leukemia !

Exciting news!

i like how all ages are able to convert skin cells into adult blood cells - not just limited to young people.

Suck it, Toronto!

lol.

Way to go McMaster!