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The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel UW scientists make strides toward manufacturing blood from stem cells By MARILYNN MARCHIONE of the Journal Sentinel staff Last Updated: Sept. 3, 2001 University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have coaxed embryonic stem cells to form blood cells - a key step toward one day being able to make an alternative source of blood in a lab dish. The hope is to make blood for transfusions that is safe from germs, which cause diseases such as mad cow disease. Also, the process might ease the national blood shortage and offer a cure for cancer patients who need bone marrow transplants but lack a suitable donor. The research team was led by UW scientist Dan Kaufman and included stem cell discoverer James Thomson. Their report was published in Tuesday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This is the first evidence of anybody that has done what we all hope can be done - to take stem cells and grow red cells and white cells and platelets for transfusion," said William Miller, a clinical professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin and president of the Blood Center of Southeastern Wisconsin. "If you can get them to go this far, it ought to be possible, with refined techniques, to get large vats of cells" and eventually produce them in huge quantities to offer an alternative blood supply, Miller said. John Thomas, a scientist and grants administrator at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, said: "This is an important first step and sets the stage for future research to determine if these methods can be used to produce human blood cells that are safe and functional." The director of the stem cell laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Albert Donnenberg, called the UW research "very, very carefully done work, and a very logical next step" for the Thomson stem cell team. He predicted that making blood from embryonic stem cells easily and cheaply would prove to be "a matter of logistics" and said the UW work was "absolutely, proof of concept that it could be done." The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation last week got a patent on the method used to make the blood cells. The foundation already has two patents on its embryonic stem cells and how they were made. The foundation and the Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center financed the blood cell work. Body's basic building blocks Embryonic stem cells are the earliest, most basic cellular building blocks that are capable of forming virtually all the kinds of tissues and organs in the body. They were first isolated and grown by Thomson in 1998. The blood research was described in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on July 29 that told of breakthroughs that UW scientists were making with private funds while waiting for President Bush to decide whether to allow federal funds to be used for stem cell research. Last month, Bush said existing batches of stem cells would qualify for funding. Directing those cells to form specific tissues like blood, nerves and insulin-producing pancreas cells is the next big step toward producing potential cures for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's, and spinal cord injuries. "This is the first specific lineage derived from the human embryonic stem cells," Kaufman said. "I don't want to give any false hope to people that there's a cure around the corner. There's a lot of work to be done." No cure yet but it will help The blood work especially could help people with leukemias and a variety of blood and bone marrow cancers called myelomas. Many of those diseases can be cured with bone marrow transplants, but fewer than a third of people who need them find a suitable donor. If stem cells could be used for transplants, it could offer those patients a cure. The UW research could be especially important if it turns out that Kaufman and the others have grown the blood "master cell," called the hematopoietic stem cell, from embryonic stem cells. The hematopoietic stem cell is an adult stem cell because it exists in bone marrow and circulating blood, and it's what doctors really are after when they give patients bone marrow transplants to try to cure cancer or replenish immune systems destroyed by cancer treatment. It produces all the cells that form the blood and immune system. Yet scientists have not been able to isolate it from marrow or circulating blood and make it reproduce without losing its "stemness," so it immediately differentiates into a specific blood cell. Need for more research seen Kaufman's work "really illustrates the problem with adult stem cells" and the reason that embryonic stem cell research needs to continue, Thomson said. The hematopoietic stem cell is the best studied of all adult stem cells. Scientists "have spent 30, 40 years on this adult stem cell and it's been impossible to culture," Thomson said. "No one's been able to culture and expand that stem cell." Thomson and Kaufman don't claim to have made hematopoetic stem cells from their embryonic cells, but write in the journal article that the groups of cells grown from their blood master cells "appear identical to those produced from human adult bone marrow cells." George Daley, a fellow at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said the UW research isn't evidence that they've got the hematopoietic stem cell, though several other blood experts said it made a convincing case. Daley said it was "certainly a nice demonstration, a technical achievement," and parallels discoveries made with mice embryonic stem cells about seven years ago. "They have pretty much been able to reproduce what's been done in mice," said Peter Newman, a Medical College of Wisconsin faculty member and vice president of its affiliated Blood Research Institute. "It's the first time it's been done with human cells." "The important part is, you might be able to derive white cells and red cells and platelets for transfusions and transplants" from embryonic stem cells in lab dishes, Newman said. This research "is a necessary step in that direction." SOURCE: The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel http://www.jsonline.com/alive/news/sep01/blood04090301.asp * * * [log in to unmask] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn