A team of British researchers has developed a method to mass produce an unlimited supply of artificial blood, which starts by making this type of blood "immortal."

The method crafted by a team from the University of Bristol and NHS Blood and Transplant, a Special Health Authority dedicated to saving and improving lives through the wide range of services, introduces a feasible way to sustainably manufacture red blood cells for clinical use.

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A bag of blood contains about a trillion red blood cells.

The new method is far superior to the existing process for producing artificial blood. The existing technique involves taking a type of stem cell that manufactures red blood cells in the body and coaxing it to do so in the lab. Each cell eventually burns out and produces no more than 50,000 red blood cells.

This is slow, inefficient and requires repeat donations in order to be of any feasible use.

The technique developed by the British team was to trap stem cells at an early stage where they grow in number indefinitely. This process is known as making stem cells "immortal."

"We have demonstrated a feasible way to sustainably manufacture red cells for clinical use," said Dr. Jan Frayne, one of the researchers. "We've grown liters of it."

What's needed to get this mass produced blood to market is the manufacturing technology for mass production. Researchers acknowledge that producing large quantities of the cultured blood is quite a challenge. They said the next phase of their work is to look at methods of expanding the yield.

The first therapeutic use of a "cultured red blood cells" is likely to be for patients with rare blood groups because suitable conventional red blood cell donations can be difficult to source. Safety trials of artificial blood are planned for later this year.

One drawback of the method is the cultured red blood cells will be a lot more expensive than conventional blood donation.

"Globally, there is a need for an alternative red cell product. Cultured red blood cells have advantages over donor blood, such as reduced risk of infectious disease transmission." said Dr. Frayne.