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Jo Mountford is making billions of red blood cells in a laboratory in Glasgow. And now she wants to scale-up production. Big time.
Mountford, from the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at the University of Glasgow, started trying to create blood in the lab in 2007 and is now able to create it on demand.
In 2008, her team produced 100,000 red blood cells; by 2014 output had reached ten billion cells for the year. The ten billion cells were stored in 88 flasks and made up 8.8 litres of blood.
The team – funded by the Wellcome Trust and incorporating universities and organisations from around the UK – is now able to produce the cells in 30-31 days. "We can choose what blood group we make," Mountford told the audience at WIRED Health.
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The NHS Blood and Transplant facility in Bristol, where donated blood is screened. A British team
called Novosang wants to render this process obsolete |
Source: Greg White
