Hematopoiesis: Formation and Generation of RBCs​​

Team Lead: Hammad Hassan, Assistant Professor​​

​​Dr Hammad Hassan, in collaboration with Professor Marcus Muench at the University of California, San Francisco, is working on establishing the protocols to generate Red Blood Cells (RBCs) in vitro. The goal is to make RBCs available as a shelf product for transfusion therapies in patients suffering from anaemia, sickle cell disease, a bleeding disorder such as haemophilia, or cancer. This ambitious goal demands a profound understanding of how, precisely, a normal stem cell differentiates towards erythroid lineage.​

The specific objectives of this research are to:

• ​Generate immortalised red blood cells from a variety of stem cell sources including adult, peripheral blood, cord blood and iPSCs
  

• Develop human model cellular systems to study red blood cell diseases and to use it as drug screening platforms

• Investigate key differences between immortalised red blood cell lines and compare it with a variety of stem cell sources 

• Identify and characterise the molecular components associated with the​ natural environment in the human body within which these red blood cells develop and mature
  

So far, Dr Hassan and his team have:

• Developed protocols to isolate CD34+ stem cell populations from cord blood

• Develop protocols to immortalise CD34+ stem cells derived from a variety of stem cell sources​
  

• Developed a detailed protocol to fully characterise the differentiating hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) going towards erythropoiesis