Blood cell 'breakthrough' could transform medicine

BRITISH scientists are claiming to have rescued patients from the brink of death by turning their blood into stem cells that can repair organs.

It could revolutionise medicine and transform the treatment of everything from heart disease to Parkinson’s.

Several patients suffering from severe aplastic anaemia, a lethal condition in which sufferers lack bone marrow, have already been cured using the technique.

Biotech firm TriStem, in London says it can turn anyone’s blood into beating heart cells for mending hearts or nerve cells for restoring brains.

If the claims are valid it would be nothing short of "Nobel prize-winning stuff", a report in New Scientist said.

The firm says its technology holds similar promise for diseases that mainstream stem cell researchers are tackling, such as heart failure, spinal cord injury and type 1 diabetes.

TriStem says it takes a sample of someone’s blood and treats the immune cells with a special antibody for a few hours, causing them to differentiate into other types of body cells.

Controlled trials are now considered essential to prove the technique works.

TriStem plans to try its treatment next on people with spinal cord injury, heart disease and leukaemia. However, it can take decades to translate advances in basic science into treatments used in clinics.