Stem cells from patient's blood could help fight heart disease "We are excited to have developed a practical and efficient method to create stem cells from a cell type found in blood," said Dr Amer Rana, who led the study. We were able to develop a method that can be used on patients on masse. Stem cells are one of the great hopes of medical research and can transform into any other type of cell the body is built from. Scientists say they should be able to repair everything from the brain to the heart, and eyes to bone. For their study, the researchers grew blood in a lab and isolated what are known as "late outgrowth endothelial progenitor cells." These can be stored for a significant period of time that prolongs the "use by date" of patient samples. "This cell type grows very easily, we can keep it long term and at any time point we can convert these cells with high efficiency into stem cells," Dr Rana said. They then turned them into so called "induced pluripotent stem" (iPS) cells, which can be turned into other body cells. Scientists have struggled to find an appropriate type of cell in the blood that can be turned into a stem cell. Often iPS cells are taken from the skin or other tissues, which can require surgery such as a biopsy. "Tissue biopsies are undesirable - particularly for children and the elderly - whereas taking blood samples is routine for all patients," said Dr Rana. So we wanted to take a methodology, which could really take the stem cell technology ... into the clinic in a practical way. Dr Rana, a lecturer in Regenerative Medicine, said the "long term" aim was to rebuild tissue in the body, including around a heart. But he said scientists could not use the technology on humans yet because there were "several safety issues" they had to overcome. "The ultimate aim is to grow tissue ... which we can use in replacement therapies, that would be ideal," he told the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme. That is a little way away just because we want to make sure the cells are safe as this technology only came around five years ago in humans so it is still early on. But a really important step is, rather than simple think about the technology in a laboratory, transfer it into a clinic and make it useful for everybody. The British Heart Foundation said these cells had "great potential." The Medical Research Council said there was "rapid progress" being made in the field. Both organisations funded the research. Figures show that cardiovascular disease kills more than 180,000 people in Britain every year.