Cambridge (England) - A pioneering way of creating stem cells from a patient’s blood has been developed by British scientists at Cambridge University amid hope it could lead to a new treatment for heart disease.
Researchers used the cells to build personalised blood vessels in a method described as “patient friendly” and efficient.  The study is published in the journal Stem Cells: Translational Medicine. Scientists grew the blood in a laboratory, where special stem cell type that can be kept “long term” was isolated and stored. They say the special cells can then be turned into “any other cell in the body”, including blood vessel cells or heart cells by using a “different cocktails of chemicals”. Scientists can then use these cells to study disease and ultimately hope to grow them into tissue to repair the damage caused by heart and circulatory diseases.
Although the team os scientists hailed the breakthrough as the easiest and safest source of producing stem cells, experts have cautioned that the safety of using such stem cells still remained unclear.