(pleasant electronic music)
- [Narrator] The coronavirus
pandemic has led to shortages
around the world, and in the
early days of the pandemic,
we ran into one particularly
concerning shortage.
We didn't have enough blood.
Blood drives across the
country were canceled,
leading to more than one million donations
going uncollected, so
when we run low on blood,
is there a backup?
Not yet, but researchers have
been working on a solution
for the future by producing
blood in their labs.
Blood can be complex to replicate
because it's made up of different parts,
red blood cells that carry oxygen,
white blood cells to fight infection,
plasma that carries nutrients and proteins
and transports blood cells,
and platelets that help your blood clot.
A lot of the momentum in the field
is with labs trying to
grow their own platelets.
How do they do that?
They use stem cells,
those are cells that have the
ability to make other cells.
Scientists have previously
tried out different types
of stem cells, but there was
a huge breakthrough in 2006
when a researcher found a
way to turn mature cells
in the body into a pluripotent stem cell,
that is a stem cell that can
create almost any other cell.
It's like if you use different
kinds of building blocks
to make this big castle,
then revert that castle
back to a single block
and then you can tweak that block,
multiply it, and build a
completely different structure.
This Nobel Prize-winning discovery
prompted researchers to change their work
so they could use these special cells.
So how do you go from
stem cell to platelet?
First you need to grow them
into what's called a megakaryocyte.
It's the huge cell that
produces platelets in the body.
Typically, scientists that
the pluripotent stem cells
and activate certain regions of their DNA
to coax them into
becoming a megakaryocyte.
Then, they mix the
megakaryocytes with fluid,
causing the cells to multiply,
and finally, they produce platelets,
but they had difficulty
producing enough platelets
until one research group
unlocked a solution.
They created a bioreactor.
It's like an eight-liter French press
which works by keeping
the megakaryocytes moving
and it allows them to produce
billions of platelets.
In other words, enough for a transfusion.
Most of this work is
currently being done in labs,
but these platelets have been tried out
on one human subject in a
clinical trial in Japan.
Right now, the technology is expensive.
It can cost labs tens
of thousands of dollars
to make one bag of platelets,
but researchers have a vision
for a more scalable
solution, platelet factories.
There's hope that, in the future,
manufactured blood could help
deliver critical therapies,
support areas of the world
where the blood supply runs low,
or be used as a backup
during global emergencies.
(pleasant synth music)
