In vitro mass production of human erythroid cells from the blood of normal donors and thalassemic patients

Patent Number: 6960473

This patent teaches how to generate large quantities of erythroid cells in vitro. This is useful for nuclear disasters or situations where large quantities of red blood cells are needed for transfusion purposes. This is a very interesting invention since it uses as the starting population blood cells and not bone marrow. The invention has 1 independent claim covering the method of generating erythroid cells. Specifically, the claim covers taking blood cells of a "low density", inducing the extracted cells to proliferate by culture in stem cell factor, erythropoietin, interleukin-3, dexamethasone and estradiol, and then inducing the proliferating cells to differentiate into the erythroid lineage by a second culture in erythropoietin and human insulin. The author published a paper that seems related to this patent (Migliaccio G, et al. In vitro mass production of human erythroid cells from the blood of normal donors and of thalassemic patients. Blood Cells Mol Dis. 2002 Mar-Apr;28(2):169-80. migliagi@iss.it )

View this patent on the USPTO website.