A new discovery has made it possible to create blood from human skin. The research was accomplished by the scientists at the McMaster University. This recent discovery was published in the science journal Nature. This discovery might enable doctors to use a patch of the person’s own skin for treatments that require transfusions.

In the near future those who need blood during surgery, cancer treatment and other blood related conditions will not need to wait for the much needed blood. 2012 will see the beginning of the clinical trials for the same. This will also prove as a boon for people with rare blood groups. They no longer need to wait for blood.

According to Mick Bhatia, scientific director of McMaster's Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, conversion from skin to blood is direct. The research team confirms that there is no requirement to change to a pluripotent stem cell from a skin stem cell to create the blood. The pluripotent stem cell has the ability to create numerous kinds of cells in the human body.

"We have shown this works using human skin. We know how it works and believe we can even improve on the process," said Bhatia. "We'll now go on to work on developing other types of human cell types from skin, as we already have encouraging evidence." Over the past two years experiments were conducted on people belonging to different age groups to confirm that skin can be turned into blood at any age.