2024-08-30 09:40:44
This hereditary disorder mostly affects people of African descent
Red blood cells are essential for oxygen to reach all the cells in our body.
More than seven million people worldwide have sickle cell anemia, an inherited disorder of red blood cells that affects hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen to all organs and tissues. In Europe, the incidence of this anemia has increased significantly in the last 15 years as a result of immigrant movements, since it affects people of African descent.
Blood transfusion is an important part of the treatment of this disease, a complex challenge for patients with unusual blood groups due to the difficulty of receiving compatible blood, since most of the donors in our country are of Caucasian origin. The red blood cells of people suffering from this disease are fragile and break easily, causing severe bleeding. But, in addition, they are not soft or deformed, like normal red blood cells, but rather rigid and intermediate or diseased shape, which prevents blood flow and ends up blocking the narrowest blood vessels, which are capillaries. When this happens, a lack of oxygen occurs in the tissues, causing pain and tissue damage.
Núria Nogués, head of the Immunohematology Laboratory of the Blood and Teixits Bank of Catalonia, leads a project to design an efficient and scalable production system in vitro that allows to collect red blood cells with rare blood groups, representative of the African population and, at the same time, are now very low in the donor population in Europe. To do this, red blood cell precursor cell lines will be generated from donors of African origin selected for their rare group profile. The project has the collaboration of the University of Bristol.
Achieving the production of red blood cells is an important scientific event that has been discussed for some time by scientific groups around the world. M. Baldomà
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