It is hoped the approach could ‘revolutionise’ treatments for people with blood disorders such as sickle cell disease and rare blood types who require regular long-term blood transfusions
The RESTORE trial is a joint research initiative by the universities of Bristol and Cambridge, NHS trusts and NHS Blood and Transplant.
The manufactured blood is grown from stem cells from donated blood, which are stimulated to expand into large numbers of red blood cells in the lab – a process that takes about three weeks.