Dear steemit and stemian

The breakthrough findings could mean that in the future, people who will need blood for surgery, cancer treatments or other blood-related diseases such as anemia, can get blood produced from a piece of their own skin for transfusion. Clinical trials may begin in 2012.

Mick Bhatia who is the scientific director of McMaster's Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute at Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and his team of researchers also showed that the conversion is direct. Making blood from the skin does not require an intermediate step that turns stem cells or skin stem cells into pluripotent stem cells that can make many other types of human cells, then convert them into blood stem cells.

"We showed that this was done using human skin, we know how it works and believe we can even optimize the process," said Bhatia. "Now we're working on developing another type of human skin cell because we already have convincing evidence." Similarly, as quoted from Physorg (07/11/10).

The discovery was replicated several times over the past two years using human skin from both old and young to prove that it can be done in people of all ages.

"These original findings are the first findings to show that human skin cells can be directly converted into blood cells through the programming process without going through the pluripte stages.Producing blood from the patient's own skin has the potential to eliminate the problem of compatibility as well as the shortage of bone marrow transplant donors Human leukocyte antigen (HLA), "says Christine Williams, PhD, Research Director at the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute.

The findings are published in the November 7 science journal Nature.

SourceHttp://www.nature.com/news/2010/101107/full/news.2010.588.html