According to Mick Bhatia, a researcher at McMaster University in Canada and co-author of the study, there is a huge demand to find a process for generating red blood cells.

He took an initiative to start testing methods that might produce red blood cells and began harvesting skin cells from human volunteers and exposing the cells to a virus. The virus injected gene OCT4 into the cells, which encodes a protein to activate other genes into making other kids of cells. When placed in a cytokine solution, with molecules that stimulate the immune system, the skin cells turned in blood cells.

The new blood cells contained all three classes: white, red and platelets. They all seemed to function like normal adult blood cells.

These results will be very helpful in cancer research, especially for blood-related cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. The technique used by the scientists can also be beneficial for chemotherapy patients. The chemotherapy process is very hard on the patient’s blood, and presents a time during which the cancer can fight back even stronger.

This technique gives hope to blood cell replenishment. If the technique keeps proving to be successful, doctors will be able to help revive blood cells at a rate faster than ever before.

The scientists hope to begin clinical trials within the next three or four years.