title: Ex-vivo expansion of red blood cells: how real for transfusion in humans?
abstract: Blood transfusion is indispensable for modern medicine. In developed countries, the blood supply is adequate and safe but blood for alloimmunized patients is often unavailable. Concerns are increasing that donations may become inadequate in the future as the population ages prompting a search for alternative transfusion products. Improvements in culture conditions and proof-of-principle studies in animal models have suggested that ex-vivo expanded red cells may represent such a product. Compared to other cell therapies transfusion poses the unique challenge of requiring great cell doses (2.5×10(12) cells vs 10(7) cells). Although production of such cell numbers is theoretically possible, current technologies generate red cells in numbers sufficient only for safety studies. It is conceived that by the time these studies will be completed, technical barriers to mass cell production will have been eliminated making transfusion with ex-vivo generated red cells a reality.
authors.affiliation: The Tisch Cancer Institute and Myeloproliferative Disease Research Consortium (MPD-RC), Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY 10029, USA. annarita.migliaccio@mssm.edu
authors.forename: Anna Rita
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Migliaccio
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Masselli
authors.forename: Lilian
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Varricchio
authors.forename: Carolyn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Whitsett
mesh_terms: D001803:Blood Transfusion; D002455:Cell Division; D004912:Erythrocytes / Q000166:cytology*; D006801:Humans