The NHSBT-led RESTORE trial into growing blood featured in The New Yorker

3 February 2025

The New Yorker magazine has published an in depth feature on research into growing blood outside of the body, which includes the NHSBT-led RESTORE trial.

RESTORE is the first trial in the world to transfuse lab grown red blood cells into other people.

It has taken more than a decade of work to progress and results are currently due towards the end of 2025.

The NHSBT-led RESTORE trial

Microscope image of a laboratory grown red blood cellRESTORE is a first in human randomised controlled trial in healthy volunteers to assess whether red blood cells that have been grown in the laboratory last longer in the circulation after transfusion and are safe.

The trial is a crossover study where the volunteers get either red cells that have been grown in the lab or standard red cells (from the same donor) in random order.

If proved safe and effective, lab-grown blood cells could in time revolutionise treatment.

Lab-grown cells could be a vehicle for delivering drug therapies and also a source for blood for people with blood disorders such as sickle cell.

The Long Quest for Artificial Blood

For The New Yorker magazine feature, 'The Long Quest for Artificial Blood' (which is linked with a paywall), the writer, Nicola Twilley, looked at different international work including RESTORE.

Nicola visited the NHSBT R&D Laboratories, NHSBT Advanced Therapies Unit (who grow the red blood cells for RESTORE), the manufacturing hall at NHSBT Filton, the blood donor centre and component development lab at NHSBT Cambridge, the NIHR Cambridge Clinical Research Facility, and Scarlett Therapeutics in Bristol.

She met with the trial’s co-lead researchers; Dr Rebecca Cardigan from NHS Blood and Transplant, and Professor Cedric Ghevaert of the University of Cambridge and NHS Blood and Transplant. Nicola also met with Professor Ashley Toye from the University of Bristol, Director of the NIHR Blood and Transplant Unit in Red Blood Cell Products.

NHS Blood and Transplant is the trial sponsor and part funder. The research programme has been delivered in collaboration with the University of Bristol. The National Institute for Health and Care Research has also provided grant funding.

Other partners include Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, NIHR Cambridge Clinical Research Facility, and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Donor volunteers give blood at NHSBT’s Cambridge Blood Donor Centre. The red blood cells are grown from the volunteer’s stem cells at NHSBT’s Advanced Therapies Unit in the Cellular and Molecular Therapies function in Bristol.

The cells are then labelled with a tracer element by the Radiopharmacy Unit at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital so they can be tracked through the recipient’s body when they are transfused.

Recipient volunteers are recruited through the NIHR BioResource. Recipient volunteers receive their infusions in the NIHR Cambridge Clinical Research Facility. Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides pharmacy, laboratory, and research support. The overall research programme, including the trial, is managed by Dr Ruth Allen with NHSBT’s Clinical Trials Unit managing the trial.

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