Scotland may host human trials of synthetic blood

Scotland may host human trials of synthetic blood

Saturday, June 01, 2013

By Press Association Reporter

The worlds first human trials of synthetic blood could take place in Scotland, it has been reported.

The licence from the UKs Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency will allow scientists at SCRM to attempt to manufacture blood on an industrial scale which will help to tackle shortages and stop the transfer of infections from blood donors, according to the paper.

Trials on humans, if approved, would be the first stage in establishing more large-scale clinical trials and could result in regular use of synthetic blood.

Researchers will use stem cells from adult donors known as induced pluripotent stem cells as part of this project instead of the more controversial embryotic ones.

Project leader Marc Turner said: In the first part of the project we used human embryonic stem cell lines and one of the problems with using those lines is you cant choose what the blood group is going to be.

Over the last few years there has been a lot of work on induced pluripotent stem cells, and with those an adult can donate a small piece of skin or a blood sample and the technology allows for stem-cell lines to be derived from that sample.

This makes our life a lot easier in some ways because that means we can identify a person with the specific blood type we want and get them to donate a sample from which we could manufacture the cell lines.

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Scotland may host human trials of synthetic blood