Ultra-high-yield manufacture of red blood cells from hematopoietic stem cells.

Provision of a safe and secure supply of transfusible red blood cells (RBC) is a major global health challenge, and it has been proposed that manufactured RBC could help to alleviate the constraints of the current donor system. Several substantial challenges must be addressed for this approach to be feasible. At the most basic level, this relates to the large quantities of cells that are required: is there sufficient biological capacity, and is it possible to produce RBC using large-scale processes? While it has been demonstrated that, in principle, up to 5 units of RBC could be generated from a single donation of umbilical cord blood (UCB) hematopoietic stem cells, such yields are insufficient to supply demand and existing culture methods are unsuitable for large-scale manufacture.