A team of researchers from Advanced Cell Technology announced that they have been able to create blood cells in their labs using stem cells. The discovery is very important because, if the technology used will be able to enter mass production, the method might provide vast quantities of blood without the need for donors.

The blood cells that were created are able to carry oxygen the same way as the normal ones, and they seem to be able to deliver it to tissues correctly. What is more, about 65 percent of the cells that are created with this method are able to reach full maturity and shed their nucleus.

The main difference that exist between blood cells and all the other cells in the body is that the blood one do not have a nucleus, and so they do not carry any DNA information. This allows blood transfusions, because the white cells in the body do not notice that these cells have been produced by another individual and they do not attack them.

Creating blood cells out of stem cells is not a new thing. However, the scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, also known as ACT, have managed to grow up to 100 billion blood cells using a single six-well plate of stem cells. This means that using their method, they were able to produce up to 100 times more blood cells from the same quantity of stem cells than any other scientists before them.

The downside of the whole matter is that, at this point, the cost of producing one unit of blood in the lab raises to a few thousand dollars. This means that unless an even better method of synthesizing blood cells is discovered, or at least improved, creating this sort of cells in the lab will not be an efficient way of getting blood for transfusions.

This is also backed up by the large number of volunteers that roll-up their sleeves in order to donate blood. The costs are fairly small, as are the risks. Each year, about 7 million liters of blood are donated.

The researchers at ACT have managed to create blood cells of type A-positive, A-negative, B-positive, B-negative and O-positive. What remain to be created are types O-negative and AB-negative. Synthesizing these two types in the lab would be very important because O-negative blood is a universal donor, while AB-negative is the rarest type of blood.

The main advantage that results from transfusions made with blood that was created in the lab is that it brings to zero the risk of getting a disease that the donor might have. If such transfusions will become available in the future, the people that will get them will no longer be threatened with getting diseases such as Hepatitis C or of being infected with HIV.

The discovery is very good news for Advanced Cell Technology, because the company has been recently struggling with financial difficulties. These difficulties have been caused by the government's decision of not supporting stem cell research any more because of moral issues.

The guys at ACT hope that the discovery will determine more people, foundations and companies to contribute to their research.