Blood factory: which stem cells?

Maria Teresa Esposito

doi:10.1186/s12878-018-0105-4

Abstract

Blood transfusions are often essential for treatment of severe anaemia and pregnancy complications. The unavailability of blood is a medical concern, especially in developing countries. New sources of red blood cells (RBC) are under investigation. Several studies have attempted to produce functional RBC from CD34+ haematopoietic stem cells (HSC) isolated from peripheral blood and umbilical cord blood, from embryonic stem cells (ESC) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). A recent article published in Nature Communications describes a novel model for generating RBC from a stable erythroid cell line obtained from bone marrow CD34+ haematopoietic stem cells (HSC). The cells generated by this method are phenotypically and functionally adult RBC, that resemble very well the donor RBC. In vivo experiments confirmed no difference in the survival of these RBC and donor RBC. The study therefore highlights that this immortalized line is a promising new source of adult RBC.

Highlights

More than 90 million blood transfusions are carried out every year in the world
Giarratana et al generated red blood cells (RBC) peripheral blood CD34+ haematopoietic stem cells (HSC) obtained by leukapheresis after mobilization with GCSF and demonstrated for the first time that these cells could survive in a human patient as long as donor RBC [4]
embryonic stem cells (ESC) are superior to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) for the amplification and percentages of enucleated RBC, the enucleation, which represents an important step in the differentiation of an erythroid progenitor in a mature RBC, does not reach in iPSC-derived RBC the same percentages achieved with RBC obtained from cord and peripheral blood CD34+ HSC

Summary

Introduction

More than 90 million blood transfusions are carried out every year in the world. The demand for blood is high in both developed and developing countries. Several studies have attempted to produce functional RBC from CD34+ haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSC) isolated from peripheral blood [3,4,5] and umbilical cord blood [3, 5,6,7,8,9], or from human embryonic stem cells (ESC) [5, 10,11,12,13,14] and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) [15–17] utilizing different methods for the differentiation of the stem cells along the erythroid pathway (Fig. 1a).

Results

Conclusion