The increasing importance of Intellectual Property in Transfusion Medicine.

The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) originated in Edinburgh in the 1920's by dentist Jack Copland. Since that time the scope of Transfusion Medicine has broadened significantly to accommodate advances in technologies such as cell isolation, culture and manipulation. Many transfusion services, including SNBTS, now provide expertise both in the traditional field of blood transfusion and the newer, wider field of human cell (including 'adult' and embryonic stem cells) and tissue procurement and culture - in all the new science of "regenerative medicine".

Cold storage preservation and warm ischaemic injury to isolated arterial segments: endothelial cell injury.

Injury to endothelial cells is thought to be important to the development of the vascular lesion of chronic rejection. It was the aim of this study to develop a semiquantitative method to assess endothelial injury in arterial grafts and to document the injury produced by cold storage preservation and additional warm ischaemia. Twelve- and 24-h cold preservation of rat aortic segments, together with an additional 1 h of warm ischaemia, were assessed.