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Researchers at the biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology say they have successfully used embryonic stem cells to grow human blood cells. 10 to 100-billion blood cells have been generated at a time and this technique could put an end to problems in sourcing blood for transfusions.

The hope is to be doing human trials of the lab grown blood by the end of 2009. The military will probably be the first to use this new technology.

It has now been shown that very large quantities of red blood cells can be generated from human embryonic stem cells. These cells are just like normal, transfusible blood. Whole tubes of blood have been generated in the lab from scratch. They have then gone on to successfully show for the first time that this blood is actually able to upload and load oxygen just like normal red blood cells.

This process can be used to create all the different blood types.

The next step in the testing process is to make sure the lab-grown blood cells maintain their integrity the same way normal blood cells do. Eventually, human testing will be necessary. The very first steps would be to use very small amounts of these cells that were labeled. The goal is to make sure they behave appropriately in humans.

Although embryonic stem cells were used in this study, researchers are confident that other types of stem cells could also be used.

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