Grant: Operating Grant

Our laboratory at McMaster's Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute (SCC-RI) was recently able to convert small amounts of skin samples to red blood cells that transport oxygen, and to platelet-producing cells that prevent bleeding and assist in wound-healing. This process is faster than using embryonic or pluripotent stem cells, and allows the patient's own cells to be transplanted back in so no rejection will occur - thereby providing a superior approach to others reported/published to date. The ability to generate these critical cells from human skin has the potential to provide a completely new and alternative source for blood transfusions, and also provides a new method to correct genetic diseases of the blood system such as anemias and thalassemia. Since publishing our work in Nature, this finding has changed the field and our current proposal aims to move this initial discovery to clinical reality. In order to do this, we must better understand the exact process and mechanism by which skin cells become blood. This information is essential to increase the efficiency and ability to increase the numbers of these cells to levels and dosages that can be used for a full-grown adult. We have made considerable headway to understand this process and by using our preliminary data we hope to obtain funds from CIHR to continue this work that we believe will be critical to improved health care and applications for those in desperate need of novel sources of blood product.