FLASK PYTHON TUTORIAL, WINDOWS 8.1, Virtualenv Python Flask on Windows 8.1 012414 

0. Download and install python2.7.6, python 3.3 may not work with this tutorial

add C:\Python27\; to Environment Variable Path

1. Go here to install easy_install for Windows

http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/installation/#windows-easy-install

Copy and save this file in Documents as distribute_python.py

http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py

2. Go to cmd, cd to dir where distribute_python.py is located

run at prompt 

>python distribute_python.py

http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py

I saved it in Documents dir/folder

3. Go to Start/Control Panel/System/Advanced System Settings/Environment Variables and add to Path C:\Python27\Scripts\;

This is my Path now:

%INTEL_DEV_REDIST%redist\intel64\compiler;%INTEL_DEV_REDIST%redist\ia32\compiler;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2013a\runtime\win64;C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2013a\bin;C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Windows Performance Toolkit\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Tools\Binn\;C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_51\bin\;C:\Python27\;C:\Python27\Scripts\;

4. At cmd prompt install pip

Users\Dell\Documents>easy_install pip

http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-i-hello-world

5. mkdir blog

6. copy make file and paste as virtualenv191.py in blog dir

https://raw.github.com/pypa/virtualenv/1.9.X/virtualenv.py

7. run python virtualenv191.py flask at blog dir

users/dell/documents/blog> python virtualenv191.py flask

this makes a flask dir with virtualenv191 installed in it

8. Select all. copy and paste at the blog prompt, right click to paste at cmd prompt, it should begin auto installing

users/dell/documents/blog>

flask\Scripts\pip install flask==0.9
flask\Scripts\pip install flask-login
flask\Scripts\pip install flask-openid
flask\Scripts\pip install sqlalchemy==0.7.9
flask\Scripts\pip install flask-sqlalchemy==0.16
flask\Scripts\pip install sqlalchemy-migrate==0.7.2
flask\Scripts\pip install flask-whooshalchemy==0.54a
flask\Scripts\pip install flask-wtf==0.8.4
flask\Scripts\pip install pytz==2013b
flask\Scripts\pip install flask-babel==0.8
flask\Scripts\pip install flup

9. Install this separately since it has problems installing, it probably could be included in the #8 list above but the tutorial had it separate.

flask\Scripts\pip install --no-deps lamson chardet flask-mail==0.7.6

10. cd to blog dir, copy and paste at prompt, right click to paste at cmd prompt

users/dell/documents/blog>

mkdir app
mkdir app/static
mkdir app/templates
mkdir tmp

11. save in app dir as __init__.py, app/__init__.py

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)
from app import views

12. Save in app dir as views.py, app/views.py

from app import app

@app.route('/')
@app.route('/index')
def index():
    return "Bonjour, Bassets!"

12a. This file as views.py also works.

from app import app

@app.route('/')

@app.route('/index')

def index():

    return "Buongiorno, Principessa Bassets!"

13. Save in root or blog dir as run.py, blog/run.py

#!flask/bin/python
from app import app
app.run(debug = True)

14. At root dir/folder, execute run.py, the backslashes are needed in Windows, not forward slashes as for Linux, case insensitive in Windows, case sensitive in Linux.

This invokes the virtualenv version of python and not the system version of python to execute the script run.py.

users/dell/documents/blog>flask\scripts\python run.py

It works it gives this

*Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/

*Restarting on reloader

He has this which is wrong

flask/Scripts/python run.py

It should be, this works

flask\Scripts\python run.py

15. View on web browser go to localhost:5000, no need to have WAMP installed or started since the installation will have a webserver, not sure if it is in the Python or virtualenv installation that has the webserver

16, It works

17. Ctrl C to break from webserver

Injections of Hope - washingtonpost.com

Injections of Hope - washingtonpost.com

Injections of Hope
Doctors Promote Offshore Stem Cell Shots, but Some Patients Cry Foul

By Brian Vastag
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; HE01

Avast human experiment is afoot. And no one is taking good notes.

Fueled by demand from desperate patients, dozens of companies around the globe are peddling stem cell injections for $15,000 to $50,000 and more. Based merely on the claims made by these companies, at least a few thousand patients from the United States have paid for stem cells overseas.

Patients dart across the border to Mexico or jet to the Caribbean, India, China and elsewhere for injections of stem cells from embryos, fetuses, umbilical cords and the patients' own fat, blood and bone marrow. These shots would be illegal in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve any such treatments.

Online ads promoting this therapy target people with spinal injuries, Lou Gehrig's disease, heart failure and other tough-to-treat conditions, promising improvements and even cures.

"Diseases and conditions such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy . . . are all being successfully treated," claims one site, returninghope.com. When asked to support the claims, Brian Dardzinksi, who operates the site from Bangkok and Hong Kong, provided one medical journal article describing the treatment of incontinence with muscle stem cells, an Austrian study now under investigation for possible ethics problems.

Dardzinski has no medical background and acts as a broker, matching U.S. patients with stem cell providers overseas. "Several hundred patient inquiries a month is not uncommon," he said. "I'm just a businessman trying to do some good."

Because the companies operate offshore, they are not subject to the FDA's strict safety regulations. And because they collect little, if any, data, it's impossible to assess whether their treatments work.

The business is drawing sharp concern from academic researchers.

"It's almost evil, because it preys on the fears and the hopes of the most vulnerable people," said Evan Snyder, a stem cell researcher at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

"There are a lot of scams out there," said Wise Young, a spinal cord injury researcher at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey. "People should be very careful."

Barbara Hanson and Jeannine Richardson discovered the risks after a trip to a stem cell clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, last year.

The women, who met in an online support forum for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, learned of a company called Stem Cell Biotherapy, which has offices in Agoura Hills, Calif., and advertised online. Hanson says one of the company's doctors, Burton Feinerman, told her he had taken 10 COPD patients to Tijuana and all had improved enough to discard their portable oxygen tanks.

Because Hanson and Richardson helped recruit patients for Stem Cell Biotherapy from the online forum, the company dropped its price from $25,000 to about $17,000 for each of them, the women said. Hanson borrowed the money from her mother, and Richardson took cash advances on her credit cards.

But a week after traveling to Tijuana at Feinerman's direction and getting injections, both women spiked fevers and developed flulike symptoms. Richardson was hospitalized for eight days after returning home to New Hampshire.

"It was like the worst pneumonia I'd ever had," said Hanson, who lives near Denver. "It was so bad I honestly thought I was going to die." Hanson believes the injections made her and Richardson sick; Richardson isn't sure.

Feinerman did not return calls asking for comment. But Casey Navabi, Stem Cell Biotherapy's chief executive, said Hanson and Richardson grew embittered after he decided not to use the women's printing business. (Hanson says that the company still owes her money.)

"They wanted our business, and we didn't give it to them," he said. "Now they're putting out a lot of negative comments about us. I view it as extortion."

About 25 patients from the forum eventually visited the Tijuana clinic, Hanson says, with Stem Cell Biotherapy acting as the broker. "None of us has gotten off of oxygen," Hanson said. She and Richardson say the injections might have slowed the course of their illnesses (they both rely on bottled oxygen less than before), but Hanson is furious. "I can't say I didn't get any [benefit]," she said. "But I sure didn't get my money's worth, and I sure didn't get what I was promised."
Patient Complaints

That refrain is common among those who pay for stem cells. Nine years ago, Fia Richmond of Santa Barbara, Calif., took her brain-damaged 3-year-old son, Palmer, to a clinic in the Bahamas run by William C. Rader, a psychiatrist from Malibu, Calif.

Palmer was unable to walk or talk, and Richmond said she decided to take a chance on Rader, who offered to inject Palmer with fetal stem cells for $25,000, telling her the cells might help her son.

When the pair returned home, Palmer began having seizures, Richmond said.

Rader disputes this. "The only communications from Mrs. Richmond [post-treatment] . . . were all very positive," he wrote in an e-mail.

Now 12, Palmer is still unable to walk or talk, his mother said.

"It was devastating to come back and for my son to not do well, to have a lot of seizures where he hadn't had seizures for years," Richmond said. She said she "had taken a step too far with my son being a guinea pig."

Another mother whose developmentally disabled child received Rader's injections, Dianne Caprio of Monterey, Calif., said: "There was no follow-up at all. He never called us. He did nothing but collect money." Caprio said her daughter Courtney received two rounds of injections, one in the Bahamas and one at Rader's clinic in the Dominican Republic. "Initially we thought we saw some improvements, but nothing really substantial," Caprio said. "Looking back, it might have been wishful thinking. I think he's just preying on desperate people." Rader provided notes that show the Caprio family originally thought they saw some initial improvement in Courtney. The notes detail several phone calls from Rader's office to the family to arrange more cell injections.

The government of the Bahamas closed Rader's clinic in 2000 after a critical television report. He moved to the Dominican Republic, where he meets and injects patients on weekends. In a phone interview, Rader said he gets his product from a lab in the republic of Georgia, where technicians extract stem cells from the brains and livers of aborted fetuses. Rader claimed in an interview to have injected more than 1,000 people with such cells since 1997.

Rader recruits patients from his Malibu office and via the Web site of his company, Medra Inc. Earlier in his career, he operated eating disorder clinics and reported medical news for a television station in Los Angeles.

During four hours of phone interviews, Rader described himself as a misunderstood pioneer. He said that he has tried to educate several physicians about the benefits of stem cell injections but that they refuse to accept that he has helped patients. Rader said his treatments have reversed Down syndrome, stopped intractable seizures in children, cured AIDS in at least two patients and boosted the immune systems of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. "If I'm telling the truth, it will change the face of medicine," he said.

Rader is not interested in talking to the FDA about conducting fully documented clinical studies. He said that if he opens his work to scrutiny, the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry will squelch him. "I trust no one," he said.
Short on Science?

Quackwatch, a Web site devoted to outing doctors practicing unsafe and unproven medicine, highlighted Rader and other overseas stem cell providers in 2006. "Their theories and methods are simplistic; their treatments may have adverse effects; they offer no credible outcome data; and their promises go far beyond what is now possible," wrote the site's founder, Stephen Barrett.

Rader dismissed the criticism, questioning Barrett's credibility. He and other stem cell providers point to testimonials, posting videos and blogs from patients who say they've improved. Research from Harvard University and elsewhere on patient decision making shows this to be smart marketing: Patients pay far more attention to stories than to statistics.

But when determining whether a medical intervention really works, "testimonials mean absolutely nothing," said Snyder, the Burnham Institute researcher. "They're worthless."

One reason: They don't allow for the possibility of spontaneous recovery. A 2007 study in the journal Spinal Cord found that "almost all" spinal cord injury patients spontaneously regain some feeling and movement.

And then there's the placebo effect: If the brain thinks it's getting a treatment, the body often feels better. Medical journals are littered with descriptions of drugs and other interventions that displayed initial promise only to wilt under the rigors of placebo-controlled studies, where some patients get the intervention and some get a sugar pill or other non-treatment.

Clinical trials in Parkinson's disease offer perhaps the most stunning demonstration of the placebo effect. In the trials, doctors transplanted fetal cells into the brains of some Parkinson's patients, hoping the cells would make the brain messenger dopamine, which diminishes with the disease. Other patients got holes drilled in their heads but no cells. Over a year, both groups showed some improvements, according to a 2004 report in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Further, of the patients who did not receive the cells, those who thought they had fared better than those who thought they had not.

In other words, believing makes the "medicine" work.

Likewise, patients who travel for stem cells are strongly motivated to feel better, said Jamie Heywood, founder of the online support network PatientsLikeMe. "If you spend so much money and sacrifice so much to do something, it's difficult to believe it didn't help," said Heywood, who tracks several offshore stem cell providers.
More Study Needed

The disease that most interests Heywood is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

In 1999, after doctors diagnosed his brother Stephen with the fatal disease, Heywood organized the first human stem cell trial in the country for ALS. After Heywood won FDA approval for the safety study, his brother and two other ALS patients received spinal injections of stem cells from their own blood at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. None of the patients improved. Stephen died in 2006.

Since then, about 20 ALS patients from PatientsLikeMe have received offshore stem cell injections, Heywood said. None has shown lasting improvements, according to patient reports and surveys on the site. "The evidence to date is that the simple 'put them in and they will heal you' model isn't going to work" against ALS, Heywood said.

The only way to know if the injections help patients, academics say, is to subject them to fully documented, placebo-controlled studies. That's why the 2,500-member International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) is developing guidelines to encourage overseas stem cell companies to collect and share data. A draft of the guidelines says the society "condemns" injections of stem cells outside rigorous studies.

At the same time, a few academics voice regret about overplaying the promise of stem cells. Reams of evidence suggest various types of stem cells do possess healing properties, but figuring out how to harness that power will take years of careful human trials, they say. "There's been extremely high levels of hope and hype" surrounding stem cells, said Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University.

"I take as much blame for creating this aura that stem cells can do anything as anyone else," Snyder said. He and other academics offer a rule of thumb: Avoid companies asking for money.

"There's a standard in clinical research: Patients don't pay for it," said George Daley, president of ISSCR and a researcher at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Snyder said this rule might screen out "some legitimate operations," but it will also weed out the scams. Legitimate clinical trials are usually funded by the government or by private companies, he said.

"At the beginning you think, 'I'm going to be cured for life, I'm going to get better every day,' " said Hanson, the lung patient who traveled to Tijuana. "Well, that isn't true."

Brian Vastag is a freelance science writer in Washington. Comments:health@washpost.com.

Bloomberg.com: News

Bloomberg.com: News: "Blood Vessels Made From Human Adult Stem Cells Grown in Mice

By Rob Waters

Blood Vessels Made From Human Adult Stem Cells Grown in Mice

By Rob Waters

July 18 (Bloomberg) -- Stem cells drawn from the blood system of adult humans or the umbilical cord blood of newborns, injected into mice, formed viable vessels that may one day deliver oxygen-rich blood to damaged organs, researchers said.

After one week, the cells spontaneously connected to one another and to the existing blood vessels of the rodents to form extensive networks that continued to transport blood over the next three weeks. The findings from Harvard Medical School were published in the journal Circulation.

If the process can be proven safe and replicated in people, it could provide a way to repair blood-starved regions of organs that have been damaged by heart attacks or other conditions that impair circulation. Unlike other experiments that have coaxed adult cells to perform new functions, the Harvard team didn't perform any genetic manipulation, said Joyce Bischoff, an associate professor at Harvard and Children's Hospital Boston.

``It's kind of a self-assembly process; they do the job on their own,'' Bischoff said in a telephone interview today. ``We mix them together and they talk to each other and give directions on how to form a blood vessel.''

The team drew samples from blood and bone marrow, isolated the stem cells within each, then mixed them with a gel material that is liquid when cold and solidifies at body temperature. The gel, after firming, formed scaffolds the cells could grow on. The materials were combined into a single suspension and injected into mice, Bischoff said.

The cells derived from blood ``form the lining of the blood vessel'' known as the endothelium and the bone marrow cells ``wrap around the endothelial cells to form the smooth muscle layer,'' Bischoff said.

Goal: Two-Day Vessels

Because damaged heart tissue or festering wounds need blood and oxygen quickly to heal, ``our goal is to speed it up to form blood vessels within one or two days,'' Bischoff said.

The advance could propel the emerging field of tissue engineering, which seeks to use stem cells and scaffolds to build replacement tissues and organs for people with various conditions. One closely held company, Tengion, based in East Norriton, Pennsylvania, is testing synthesized bladders in human trials and developing ways to create blood vessels and kidneys.

Before the method can be tested in humans, researchers will need to show that the cells they've isolated and expanded are pure and uncontaminated by other cell types. The technique will need to be proven safe in many more animals and the process will need to be done in a completely sterile environment that's certified by regulators.

``Science moves very slowly,'' Bischoff said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rob Waters in San Francisco at rwaters5@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: July 18, 2008 16:00 EDT

Bloomberg.com: News

Bloomberg.com: News: "Glaxo Gives Harvard $25 Million for Stem Cell Study (Update2)

By John Lauerman and Brian Kladko

Glaxo Gives Harvard $25 Million for Stem Cell Study (Update2)

By John Lauerman and Brian Kladko

July 24 (Bloomberg) -- GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Europe's largest drugmaker, will give the Harvard Stem Cell Institute at least $25 million over five years to speed development of treatments using the technology.

Grants will support work at the institute and at least four hospitals affiliated with Harvard University, Glaxo said today in an e-mailed statement. Scientists will use the money to explore using stem cells to fight cancer, diabetes and obesity along with nerve, heart, and musculoskeletal diseases, Harvard said in a statement on its Web site.

The funding ``will allow the Harvard Stem Cell Institute to ultimately fulfill its promise of advancing stem cell science to benefit patients,'' said Brock Reeve, the institute's executive director, in the statement. Glaxo, based in London, also said it will fund ``seed'' grants aimed at early stage research.

The stem cell institute, a collection of researchers from schools of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university and from affiliated institutions in Boston, was created four years ago. It plans to occupy part of a complex being built in the Allston section of Boston, the first step in Harvard's expansion into that neighborhood. The building is expected to be completed in 2011, said B.D. Colen, a Harvard spokesman.

Stem cells from embryos have the ability to become any of the roughly 210 cell types in the human body. Harvard scientists also conduct research with adult stem cells that replenish specific tissues and organ.

Private funding has become more importance since 2001 when President George W. Bush restricted use of federal money for research on embryonic stem cells because embryos are destroyed. Colen, the Harvard spokesman, said the institute had previously raised about $70 million, mostly from individual donors.

The affiliated hospitals collaborating on the research are the Joslin Diabetes Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, all in Boston, according to the Harvard statement.

To contact the reporters on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net; Brian Kladko in Boston at bkladko@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: July 24, 2008 13:54 EDT

Bloomberg.com: News

Bloomberg.com: News: "Glaxo Gives Harvard $25 Million for Stem Cell Study (Update2)

By John Lauerman and Brian Kladko

Glaxo Gives Harvard $25 Million for Stem Cell Study (Update2)

By John Lauerman and Brian Kladko

July 24 (Bloomberg) -- GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Europe's largest drugmaker, will give the Harvard Stem Cell Institute at least $25 million over five years to speed development of treatments using the technology.

Grants will support work at the institute and at least four hospitals affiliated with Harvard University, Glaxo said today in an e-mailed statement. Scientists will use the money to explore using stem cells to fight cancer, diabetes and obesity along with nerve, heart, and musculoskeletal diseases, Harvard said in a statement on its Web site.

The funding ``will allow the Harvard Stem Cell Institute to ultimately fulfill its promise of advancing stem cell science to benefit patients,'' said Brock Reeve, the institute's executive director, in the statement. Glaxo, based in London, also said it will fund ``seed'' grants aimed at early stage research.

The stem cell institute, a collection of researchers from schools of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university and from affiliated institutions in Boston, was created four years ago. It plans to occupy part of a complex being built in the Allston section of Boston, the first step in Harvard's expansion into that neighborhood. The building is expected to be completed in 2011, said B.D. Colen, a Harvard spokesman.

Stem cells from embryos have the ability to become any of the roughly 210 cell types in the human body. Harvard scientists also conduct research with adult stem cells that replenish specific tissues and organ.

Private funding has become more importance since 2001 when President George W. Bush restricted use of federal money for research on embryonic stem cells because embryos are destroyed. Colen, the Harvard spokesman, said the institute had previously raised about $70 million, mostly from individual donors.

The affiliated hospitals collaborating on the research are the Joslin Diabetes Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, all in Boston, according to the Harvard statement.

To contact the reporters on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net; Brian Kladko in Boston at bkladko@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: July 24, 2008 13:54 EDT

Bloomberg.com: News

Bloomberg.com: News: "Brain Cells Made From Skin of 80-Year-Olds With Lou Gehrig's

By Rob Waters

Brain Cells Made From Skin of 80-Year-Olds With Lou Gehrig's

By Rob Waters

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- Researchers at Harvard University have made motor neurons, the brain cells that degenerate in patients with Lou Gehrig's disease, from skin cells taken from two elderly sisters with the condition.

The advance, published today in the journal Science, used a technique developed during the last two years that gives adult cells the same power as those from embryos to turn into any cell type in the body. The disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, robs patients of muscular control and may eventually lead to paralysis.

The Harvard team took the first step toward fulfilling one of the promises of the new technology by creating lines of human stem cells from the tissue of patients with a genetic disease. The neurons created may, over time, show early signs of ALS, a disease that normally strikes people in their 50s and 60s, allowing researchers to study its workings and hunt for cures.

``We now have in the culture dish cells which have the same genetic make-up as do the patients,'' said Christopher Henderson, a researcher at Columbia University in New York and co-author of the study, on a call with reporters yesterday. ``They are the very cells that are affected in the disease. This provides us the opportunity to study these motor neurons and see whether they behave in a manner that mimics the disease.''

Yamanaka Method

The neural cells were derived by the team using a method first developed by Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher at Kyoto University in Japan. It involves inserting four different genes into the skin cells, causing them to revert to a primordial state similar to embryonic stem cells.

The immediate potential of the method is that it will reveal the chemical and molecular changes that occur in motor neurons before they degenerate. It also will allow researchers to test libraries of chemical compounds on the cells to see if they can intervene in this process.

Because Yamanaka's method uses viruses to ferry the genes into the cells, it can trigger cancer and other undesired effects. Research teams around the world are now looking for alternative methods of reprogramming cells without using viruses. Unless a safer method is found, the technique can't be used to make treatments.

Kevin Eggan, the lead author of the study, said Yamanaka's technique provided a way to proceed with research that he and his colleagues had hoped to conduct by cloning patients' skin cells, the same method used in 1996 to create Dolly the sheep.

Women as Donors

In that technique, the nucleus of a patient's skin cell is inserted into a woman's egg cell whose genetic material has been removed. Eggan said he and other scientists haven't obtained enough egg cells from women to successfully clone human cells because of ethical rules that bar researchers from paying egg donors for their time.

The Harvard Stem Cell Institute, where Eggan works, has spent about $100,000 on newspaper advertisements asking young women to donate their eggs for research. While the promotion generated hundreds of phone calls from interested women, only one provided an egg.

``When told they couldn't be compensated for their time, they rapidly lost interest,'' Eggan said during the call. Women have to spend about 60 hours to provide eggs, partly to undergo uncomfortable and sometimes risky hormone treatments to stimulate the release of multiple eggs, Eggan said.

The new finding shows the skin cells of older patients can be used to make stem cells, even though researchers had been concerned that their age might prevent the process from working. The cells came from sisters who are 82 and 89 years old and are among the oldest living patients with ALS, according to the study.

Eggan said his team also is trying similar work using cells from patients with other forms of ALS.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rob Waters in San Francisco at rwaters5@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: July 31, 2008 14:00 EDT

Bloomberg.com: News

Bloomberg.com: News: "Advanced Cell Makes Blood From Embryonic Stem Cells (Update1)

By John Lauerman

Advanced Cell Makes Blood From Embryonic Stem Cells (Update1)

By John Lauerman

Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Advanced Cell Technology Inc. scientists said they have developed a way to make human blood from embryonic stem cells, opening the door to a potential new source of often-scarce supplies.

The red blood cells can carry and deliver oxygen, and have other vital features of normal cells, Alameda, California-based Advanced Cell said in the study, published today online by the journal Blood. The research, which involved scientists from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, produced as many as 100 billion red cells from a single dish of stem cells.

Blood shortages delay hundreds of surgeries in the U.S. annually, and the military is seeking sources of fresh blood for combat casualties. Embryonic stem cells, which can make any cell type, might offer a fresh blood source for hospitals and the battlefield, said Robert Lanza, vice president of medical and scientific development for Advanced Cell.

``This is a scalable process, and there's virtually no limit to the amount of blood you could produce, given the time and resources,'' Lanza said yesterday in a telephone interview from his office in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Advanced Cell gained a penny, or 23 percent, to 5 cents in over the counter trading at 4 p.m. New York time, and has lost 84 percent in the past 12 months.

About 15 million units of blood were collected in the U.S. in 2004, according to the Nationwide Blood Collection and Utilization Survey Report in 2005, the latest year for which data are available. Regional and local supplies fall short when adequate numbers of donors can't be found.

Mouse Tissue

Lanza's team put the embryonic stem cells on a layer of mouse tissue that provides nourishment, where they grew into blood cells progenitors called hemangioblasts. The scientists used a cocktail of chemicals to get the progenitor cells to make red blood cells.

Crucial to the experiment was making sure the blood cells would load and unload oxygen at the proper times, their normal function in the body. About 60 percent of the red blood cells also lacked a nucleus, the structure that contains DNA in most cells. Normal red blood cells have no nuclei.

The scientists were able to make enough blood to fill a small test-tube. While testing the cells in animals and people would probably take several years, making greater amounts of blood is within reach, he said.

``It's clearly doable,'' he said. ``It's just a matter of improving efficiency and containing costs.''

Need For Blood

At least 546 elective surgeries were delayed in 2004 because of short blood supplies, according to the report. New York issued an urgent appeal for blood donors in 2006 when supplies fell dangerously low, and last year the American Red Cross issued a similar alert for New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, the Defense Department's research and development office, is encouraging new ways to generate blood for use on the battlefield. At a workshop last year, defense scientists described their desire to develop an ``in-theater culture system'' to produce fresh red blood cells to treat injured soldiers.

Using embryonic stem cells for this purpose has been hampered by President George W. Bush's policy, which restricts government funding for research to designated existing lines of cells, Lanza said. None of the Bush-approved colonies of stem cells are from embryos with O-negative blood, the universal donor blood type, which is ideal for civilian and military applications, he said.

Alternative Source

An alternative source of safe, fresh blood would be good news for patients and hospitals, said Louis Katz, past president of America's Blood Centers, a Washington-based group of private collection companies. Donated blood must be tested for numerous infections, such as the AIDS virus, and some research suggests that even short-term storage may harm blood vessels in transfused people, he said.

``A robust supply of red blood cells is a great thing,'' Katz said yesterday in a telephone interview. ``I don't care if it comes out of a vat or a donor.''

Katz's Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center in Davenport, Iowa, charges about $200 for a unit of blood. Each packet undergoes about $55 worth of testing for HIV, liver viruses and other contaminants, he said.

New tests are added as germs, such as West Nile virus, are discovered to be transmitted through transfused blood. Emory University in Atlanta said yesterday that it will receive $8 million over five years from the government to find ways to protect babies with blood cancers from transfusion-related infections.

Blood from embryonic stem cells could be produced free of such infections, and without immune cells that can attack transfusion recipients, Lanza said. He produced his cells from four embryonic lines, one supplied by the government, two made by Advanced Cell, and one from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: August 19, 2008 16:25 EDT