Scientists Turn Skin Into Blood 229
Breakthru writes "In an important breakthrough, scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin. The discovery, published in the prestigious science journal Nature today, could mean that in the foreseeable future people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of other blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012."
Sunlight? (Score:5, Funny)
So not only will it clot, it can tan?
Just one minor complication. (Score:4, Funny)
That whole "walking around with no skin" situation could be a bit of a problem.
Re:Just one minor complication. (Score:5, Funny)
That whole "walking around with no skin" situation could be a bit of a problem.
So you think walking around with no blood is preferable?
Re:Just one minor complication. (Score:5, Informative)
Link [healthzone.ca]
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Is that after 'growing' the skin to a larger size, like is done for burn victims or other skin graft recipients?
Also, if they could make the IV bag out of 'growing' skin, it would never run out of blood!
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Converted cells aren't without their drawbacks, though. Unlike iPS and embryonic stem cells, they cannot easily multiply in the lab, so producing the large quantities needed for applications such as scr
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Robbie Williams didn't seem to have any trouble with it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGelsMOIJZY [youtube.com]
(WARNING: Vid contains male striptease, horrible music, and oh yeah, considerable gore)
How much blood can "a patch of skin" provide? (Score:2)
Re:How much blood can "a patch of skin" provide? (Score:4, Insightful)
Useless note to Slashdot editors: Stay away from University PR Blurbs. A bigger waste of electrons than Fox News.
Re:How much blood can "a patch of skin" provide? (Score:5, Informative)
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Maybe it is too late at night right now, but I don't see where the linked article addresses how large a skin sample has to be taken to produce enough for a blood transfusion. Could you elaborate (even if I'm "not even wrong")?
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thanks CWDog,
now I am way more inclined to believe this, 'McMaster' university sounds a bit fishy.
For those looking for a summary:
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To make blood progenitor cells they infected skin fibroblasts with a virus inserting the OCT4 gene, then grew them in a soup of immune-stimulating cytokines.
OCT4 is one of a handful of Yamanaka factors used to transform fibroblasts into iPS cells, but Bhatia's team found no evidence that the blood progenitor cells that they had made went through an embryonic stat
How much skin to make a pint of blood? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seems to me they invented the reverse of the process that's really needed. It's a lot harder to get enough skin for grafting than it is to get blood for transfusions. Wouldn't blood-to-skin be a better conversion?
Re:How much skin to make a pint of blood? (Score:4, Funny)
Just needs some reverse engineering.
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There's less need for donor skin, however. More people require blood during medical procedures than need skin, and usually more blood than skin is needed, even within a procedure that needs both. Furthermore, there's ways to keep a person alive with portions of skin missing. No blood is a little bit harder to deal with. During that extra time, you can culture their own skin, should they have any, or wait for a donor.
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Bloodless surgery is great when it's an option. When the doctor is replacing blood already lost to trauma, there's nothing to take out, clean, and put back in to the patient. It's already gone.
Re:How much skin to make a pint of blood? (Score:5, Informative)
A good question. The backwards conversion is impossible because the vast majority of blood cells are RBCs (Red Blood Cells or erythrocytes) and these have gotten rid of their nucleus, making them a cellular dead end doomed to destruction in about 120 days.
Also, blood is mostly free water (plasma) and when RBCs are created their progenitor cells divide many times in the production process. Assuming that this process they're using is similar, you're talking about impressive volume multiplication in the conversion from skin to blood.
Then again.... I'm an idiot .....
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Mammal red blood cells lack a nucleus. This is, in general, not true for other vertebrate animals although there are a few exceptions which I cannot think of right now
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You can grow skin in a lab - something you' aren't going to do with red blood cells. The "premature cellular aging" and "oh shit we used a made them cancer" also probably doesn't matter once you applied the magic to turn them into blood.
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I'd guess two pints. A link two threads up claims they were making red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets from the skin cells. Given that blood is 55% plasma (which itself is mostly water) it stands to reason that a 'pint' of skin makes two pints of blood - just add water! :)
up side, has blood.. (Score:2)
down side, FACE OFF!!
Soylent Red is made of PEOPLE (Score:5, Funny)
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A true breakthrough (Score:3, Funny)
Fucking PR (Score:2, Insightful)
Big Deal (Score:2)
Any kid with a skateboard knows how to do that...
Nasty mental picture, though. Good idea for a zombie movie. "A virus that turns skin... into BLOOOD! What could go wrong?"
Hallowen 2011 (Score:2)
Many questions still... (Score:3, Insightful)
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They're not actually making whole blood, which is mostly water. They're making progenitor cells for blood which go on to produce red cells, white cells, and platelets. Most of the volume would come from somewhere else, but the cells they are making make the cells.
conservation of mass (Score:2)
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I suppose they add some things, but surely the process must roughly obey conservation of mass.
That's the nice thing, sometimes, about biology. You can grow more of it, provided appropriate conditions and nutrients. This process would indeed be totally clinically useless - though still scientifically interesting - if it relied on a one-to-one production of blood cells from skin cells.
I see (at least) two major reasons why the scientists would choose to use skin fibroblasts as a starting material. First, skin cells are quite easy to harvest, and your body is already built to repair and replace m
Really? (Score:4, Funny)
Recursion! (Score:2)
Cut off a patch of skin. Yeah, that'll stop the bleeding!
This is a wonderful experiment if you add cutty emos to the mix
Good news, everybody! (Score:2)
Doctor: "Good news! We've managed to turn all your skin into blood! Now, there is also some slightly bad news..."
Meh (Score:2)
Its been done. Ever heard of a skateboard?
I Drink Your Blood ... I Eat Your Skin (Score:2)
The scientist obviously got their inspiration from this double feature: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/be/I_Drink_Your_Blood_I_Eat_Your_Skin.jpg [wikimedia.org]
Wasn't that a horror movie plot? (Score:2)
This isn't news (Score:3, Funny)
I was able to turn quite a lot of skin into quite a lot of blood, with nothing more complicated than a length of aerial cable and a Peugeot Boxer van. Feed aerial cable down through the roof, slide hand between headlining and door frame to retrieve cable, and voila! Lots of blood and no skin on the back of your hand!
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I've Turned Skin to Blood, Myself! (Score:2)
"If I had a hammer..."
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Re:Another Nail... (Score:5, Interesting)
Both sides of that argument had a lot of wrong impressions and misunderstandings. Using embryonic stem cells wan't directly about treatment, it was about research, there were properties that they wanted to understand. The biomedical community needed to learn how they work so that that knowledge can be used as a baseline to compare treatments. Interviewees on Science Friday did a pretty good job of explaining what they were looking for and why embryonic stem cells were desired for research. As for treatment though, I don't think ESC were ever going to be used in treatments except for very limited trials.
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Re:Another Nail... (Score:4, Funny)
[Giggedy]
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I'm fairly sure a lot of the /. readership would like to participate in the creation of ESCs.
I know you are being funny but your comment reminded me: research shows that the average sexually active straight woman not using birth control will shed fertilized eggs on a regular basis (entirely naturally) because they fail to implant or because her period arrives too quickly (not enough hormones build up to trigger the "I'm preggers" alarm and stop the monthly cycle). Of the ones that do implant, a significant number miscarry due to errors in the DNA, cell replication, or other developmental issues. So
Re:Another Nail... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some of the worst atrocities conducted by humanity have been done in $deity's name, yet all combined they'd still number less than the total losses from the situations you described above. I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't some form of irony on his part.
Even worse atrocities have been perpetrated by absolute atheists for completely human reasons. Stalin, Mao, etc. Mankind can be a vicious, ruthless bunch. Using $deity to legitimize our greed and depravity is not a reflection on $deity, it is a reflection on us.
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ridiculous controversy
Would you define a "ridiculous controversy" as one in which you have made up your mind? Or perhaps one where you think others are wrong? You are aware that a very large portion of the country does not see this as a ridiculous argument, right?
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Even if it is a replacement, we're still years behind where we would be if the hicks didn't insist that we throw out the unused embryos. The reality is that we've got plenty of embryonic stem cells available without creating any more. Which really ought to be where the morals come into it. As it stands we're destroying the extra stem cells from IVF instead of using them because the right won't allow scientists to use them.
Yes, because research is only done in the USA, no one else has the will or facilities to do any experiments.
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Furthermore, on the actual topic of stem cells, all that happened was that federal money couldn't be used for the research. Fund it separately if you want to
Re:Another Nail... (Score:5, Funny)
Then you should probably shower more often.
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Actually, this doesn't reprogram the cells to be IPS cells. It's a direct conversion, per the actual article from the actual source [nature.com].
One advantage of direct cell conversions is that unlike embryonic stem cells or IPS cells stuck itno a human body, they're pretty sure these cells wouldn't be likely to cause tumors.
Re:Another Nail... (Score:5, Informative)
Even if it is a replacement, we're still years behind where we would be if the hicks didn't insist that we throw out the unused embryos.
First sentence: bigoted language. Sounds like we're off to a good start.
As near as I can gather you are intending this post toward the 'life-begins-at-conception' branch of the American pro life movement. In which case you are a bit confused in saying they "insist we throw out the unused embryos" given that they fight tooth and nail specifically to prevent unused embryos from being discarded. They often oppose IVF itself precisely because excess embryos are thrown out.
As it stands we're destroying the extra stem cells from IVF instead of using them because the right won't allow scientists to use them.
That's quite an uninformed statement. There really is no restriction on what can or cannot be done with embryos (apart from I believe in the state of Indiana). They are thrown out largely because there is no use from them. The restrictions which have existed (until Obama overturned them) regard limiting federally funded research to certain pre-existent lines.
The reality is that we've got plenty of embryonic stem cells available without creating any more. Which really ought to be where the morals come into it.
Where, exactly? At the point you align morals with "doing what's convenient and what we would have done anyway" I don't think you've really addressed a moral question at all.
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This is why research into controversial subjects should be moved out of the US. The outcome for human knowledge is more important than "doing it here", and US scientist might consider offering their services to more enlightened nations. There are plenty of US expats all over the world, and no reason not to add to that number. More USians being exposed to the rest of the world is healthy as well.
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Or to be more blunt about it, do you honestly think that there being a scientific demand for embryos has no impact whatsoever on the number available? Do you seriously think that it could never be used as a justification for any process
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What's ethical about a vaginal discharge? Either in the petri dish or the panty liner, that eggs not ever going to become a baby.
This issue is simply about telling people what they can and can't do with their own cells. Next you're going to tell me masturbation should be illegal.
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Next you're going to tell me masturbation should be illegal.
Yep, that's probably next on the agenda. Especially if it's for commercial or research purposes.
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This issue is simply about telling people what they can and can't do with their own cells. Next you're going to tell me masturbation should be illegal.
Wait until the morality police find out that DNA differs slightly between sperm cells*...fap now while you still can!
*(I'm pretty sure, would like someone with good bio knowledge to confirm...couldn't find any good online sources last time this issue came up)
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I'm an atheist, my degree is biology and I oppose embryonic stem cell research. It's not needed.
"Not needed?" WTF? Well if you follow that line of thinking, has any progress beyond whipping the demons out of people been "needed"? Why is this branch of medical advancement not "needed?"
And if you're an atheist then why would you possibly oppose ESC research? There is something quite irrational about your sense of morality if you're an atheist - I would expect it from some sort of spiritualist who thinks that destroying a stem cell is destroying a soul, or a Christian who has inherited some of the irrati
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Obviously your PhD program didn't care much about spelling and grammar.
Re:Another Nail... (Score:4, Funny)
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Embryonic Stem Cell Research has yet another nail pounded into its coffin.
Of course people will still support it as some kind of political statement.
With the advent of the high-speed train, the automobile has had yet another nail pounded into it's coffin. Of course, people will still continue to buy them as some sort of political statement.
See how stupid you sound?
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Seems like a decent analogy to me. Just because we discover something new, it doesn't mean it will replace everything that does anything similar.
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Seems like a pretty good analogy.
Just because someone manages to roll a car along on hexagons doesn't put a nail in the coffin of cars with round wheels.
block off a road because you don't like it and someone finds another harder, longer more circituitous route that doesn't make blocking the road any more sensible or mean that taking the better route wouldn't have been a far far better idea.
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Unsupported assertion is unsupported.
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Dear Pathetic Concern Troll:
Sorry about your butthurt.
I suppose I should be sorry to tell you this, but America's founders were Deists, Unitarians, Atheists and Freemasons.
Scarcely the creme of "christianity".
Oh, also. Most Americans have no beef about using embryos for research that will help humanity. The research IS being done, despite your butthurt, in Europe and Asia, where christian lunatics have no say in the matter.
So, here's the deal. People like you are dying out. Every generation more and more pe
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We don't really need to do anything. Our survival stems from our evolved ability to correctly attribute cause to effect, and therefore be able to control effects by controlling causes. As soon as you remove this ability (by claiming simply that the cause is "god dun it") you remove the ability to control reality, which means removing the ability of self preservation. This is why countries where religion isn't rampant are able to run themselves in a more sustained way, right across the board, you'll tend to
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this thought process also makes for an easy lay, so it isn't all that bad ;)
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I'd say that's only true for religious fundamentalists and related nutballs, not all religion in general (most mainstream religions have little to no direct conflict with reality) - the US has a very high proportion of (specifically Christian) fundamentalists/nutballs in their religious population compared to say, Canada or Europe.
Yeah some people will say "oh no they're just more vocal" but guess what, no matter how vocal you are you still only get one vote, and the US election polls show their true number
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But our ability to survive is affected by ability to attribute cause to effect, and I already listed a few visible effects of this. You may think that not understanding the sun has no effect, that it still rises and sets every day, but that's simply not true. At the basic level, understanding long term climate effects helps to increase crop yields, which has a direct effect on the amount of life that can be supported. At the more advanced end, we have the SOHO and SDO satellites trained on the sun to learn
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You sound like you're stuck in a bubble. Try looking outside your bubble at other countries in the world, that's the only way you can draw a comparison.
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Re:This should make vampires happy! (Score:5, Insightful)
You should probably be aware that not all Christians are Catholics. There are plenty of Christians who believe in birth control (including many Catholics who disagree with their church over it).
Most of them don't believe in abortion as a convenient form of birth control, though. Contraception is much easier, safer, and cheaper for the mother than abortion, even if you do think abortion is grand.
Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest. However, I know that making it illegal wouldn't stop it. It'd just drive it underground and make everybody involved -- mothers, fathers, doctors and nurses performing -- worse off. I think it should be, as President Clinton said, "legal, safe, and rare".
Now, about the difference between IVF and abortion... IVF is not abortion. The embryos from IVF used for ECS research have not been implanted then scraped out by a surgeon. They are the spare embryos that were never implanted in the uterus. These are left over from women and couples trying to get pregnant and have kids, not preventing it. It's not about birth control in the common sense of the phrase, which is preventing births.
Your argument seems to confuse quite a few topics. You also generalize quite a few groups into one you clearly disagree with the most. In your quest to vilify people as simpletons who don't grasp the issues at hand, you have oversimplified the topics and (probably intentionally) failed to even acknowledge the issues at hand are much more complex than you mention.
Re:This should make vampires happy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Most US Christians are either OF the religious right, or more importantly will never oppose it.
The few on Slashdot aren't representative. The MANY who just voted the Teapublicans into power ARE representative, and just proved it yet again.
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The plural of anecdote is not data.
Wake me when vocal Christians act with _decisive_ power in opposition to the Religious Right. Inaction is a choice. The important churches vote Right.
I tire of these mewling excuses from the left. The Religious Right at least have the courage of their convictions. The tiny religious left (which is a contradiction in terms) is obviously too confused to function, so it doesn't.
Have fun, religion is whatever you'd like to imagine (as is all superstition) but don't expect obse
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"Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest."
That's more or less my stance on the issue, if you throw in a "However, I don't feel it's my right to enforce my moral view on everyone else using the force of government -- accordingly I'm pro choice if only because I feel that it's a grave moral choice that belongs to the woman and no one else. Making it illegal won't stop it, merely make it less safe."
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However, I don't feel it's my right to enforce my moral view on everyone else using the force of government
That's actually one of the purposes of government--to enforce a standard acceptab;e moral view represented by the voters. If you're a voter--why should your view not be represented by law? We do the same thing for murder, theft, etc--these are all deemed immoral by the public and as such we have laws against them.
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Umm, immoral? I don't believe thats the reason we make murder illegal. I'm pretty sure it is because it is demonstratebly detrimental to society as a whole.
That's pretty much the working legal definition of "immoral".
Same for theft. And other major crimes. No such argument can be made for ESC research, beyond personal offense taken by some based on their morals.
These aren't my views, but I bring them up because you're glossing over them:
There are a lot of people who view the coordinated death of an embryo as murder. Not "similar to murder", or "analogous to murder", but "is murder". Put yourself in their shoes. How do you compromise on that? How do say, "I find this whole murder thing distasteful, but you're right; I'm just pushing my morality off on strangers"?
Suppose someone was proposing a law to allo
Re:This should make vampires happy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest.
How about in the case of a 15-year-old girl whose Christian parents who wouldn't talk about sex at all with her for fear that her hearing about it would encourage her to do it? So the girl doesn't know the fundamentals and trusts her new boyfriend who insists "condoms don't feel good" and "I'll pull out".
What I'm asking is: how do you feel about unwanted and highly personally destructive pregnancies ultimately enabled by ignorance due to religion?
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Incoming down-mods! You just brought Bristol Palin into this!
Re:This should make vampires happy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of them don't believe in abortion as a convenient form of birth control, though.
I've never met anyone who thinks abortion is a convenient form of birth control, including women who have had several of them.
Contraception is much easier, safer, and cheaper for the mother than abortion, even if you do think abortion is grand.
It's also far from perfect.
Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest.
[...]
Now, about the difference between IVF and abortion... IVF is not abortion.
I am fascinated to hear how you've managed to justify that little mental disconnect to yourself. What's the moral difference between creating an embryo in a test tube and then destroying it, and creating an embryo in a uterus and then destroying it ? By what measure can destroying an embryo that was almost certainly an accident be considered a greater crime than deliberately creating dozens (if not hundreds) of them with the absolute foreknowledge they would nearly all be destroyed (ie: creating them to destroy them) ?
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What kind of woman has several abortions without it being a (convenient) form of birth control?
Why? (Score:2)
Personally, I'm against abortion in principle unless it's an unusually dangerous pregnancy for the mother or the result of rape or incest.
Why is a child produced through rape or incest any less deserving of life than one who was not?
To me, THIS is what makes pro-lifers such hypocrites. "Oh yeah, we're 100% against the *murder of precious babies*, except sometimes not."
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No can do with red blood cells. No nucleus.
Never say never I think. Mammal red blood cells lack a nucleus, but this is not generally true for the red blood cells of other vertebrates. Why not engineer a solution that yields mammalian red blood cells with a nucleus? Considering what has already been done I don't see this as an impossibility.
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Because cross-species compatability even within mammals is really low, and the effort expended solving it would likely be better served in solving host vs. graft issues with people receiving donations from people, since that would increase life expectancy of donor recipients and broaden the pool of acceptable donor parts. Basically, you're right, it's not impossible, it's just more effort than it's currently worth.
Burn units (Score:2)
That was my first thought too, but I was thinking of burn units. The reverse trick of turning blood into skin would be a godsend.
Re:Quantity? (Score:4, Informative)
No, because most of that is water. Anyways, if you read the actual article in Nature, you will find out how much skin it takes. The information you want is in the supplementary information and they don't put that behind the paywall.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/nature09591-s1.pdf
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Is it so hard to give the answer? Jeeze.
Calculation of dermal patch size required to achieve full hematopoietic reconstitution:
7.1 skin punctures are needed equalling to 42.84 mm (7.14 x 6 mm) diameter skin patch
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Yeah if you could weaponize this I am sure the military would be all over it like white on rice.... Not sure if it would violate some rules of the Geneva convention though (I hope it would to be honest.)
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well, can't have people know that a socialist utopia such as Canada with its death panels and socialized medicine can come up with important research.
Granted, I do believe a lot of stem cell research ended up in Canada because of the American distaste for embryonic stem cells.
Either way, yay us. Yay Science.
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OH NOES (Score:2)
It's fuck-space-exploration-now-make-me-live-longer AC, either one of Slashdot's most horrible posters or most elite trolls :-(