An overlooked protein may advance artificial blood production

Making blood in the lab can be hard because scientists don’t know what triggers a key final step in red blood cell maturation. A new study may change that.

The chemokine CXCL12 helps red blood cell progenitors achieve the final steps of maturation. Image credit:©iStock, CreativeDesignArt

Donated blood is often in short supply, so to prevent dire blood shortages, scientists are figuring out a way to synthesize blood in the laboratory. However, researchers often face difficulties because they can’t effectively induce enucleation, a crucial process in mammalian red blood cell maturation.

“So far, there is no soluble factor described which is able to trigger this enucleation process,” said Julia Gutjahr, a cell biologist at the University of Konstanz.

Recently, Gutjahr’s team found that CXCL12, a signaling protein, may solve this problem.1 When the researchers exposed mice erythroblasts, or immature red blood cells, to CXCL12, they triggered enucleation. Their findings, reported in Science Signaling, may help advance efforts in making blood in the lab.

“The rate of enucleation limits the production rate [of artificial blood], so anything that leads to a better understanding of how the maturing red [blood] cell might extrude the nucleus is great and to be celebrated,” said Cédric Ghevaert, a hematologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the study.