Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies are reported to have developed an enhanced method for developing increased numbers of blood cells from patients’ cells.

Also, the new technique will instantly be useful in more stem cell studies, and when perfected, it could be used in stem cell therapies for a broad variety of conditions as well as cancers and immune illnesses.

Inder M. Verma, PhD, senior author of the report, Irwin and Joan Jacobs Chair in Exemplary Life Science and American Cancer Society, as well as Professor of Molecular Biology at the Salk Institute Laboratory of Genetics, stated: “There are further improvements that we need to make, but this takes us a significant step closer to the ultimate goal, which is to be able to take ordinary cells from a patient, induce them to become stem cells”.

However, stem cell researchers have been making major efforts towards this goal since 2006, when the techniques for transforming ordinary skin cells into induced ‘pluripotential’ stem cells were initially reported. Also, iPSCs were similar to the embryonic stem cells from which organisms were developed.

Moreover, researchers at the moment intend to find the ‘precise mixes and sequences’ of chemical compounds required to make iPSCs mature into ‘tissue-specific’ stem cells of their desire, as iPSCs can renew itself, and transplanted into the body to produce the 'progenitor cells that multiply locally and produce mature tissue cells’.