Pluripotent stem cells can make virtually every cell type in the body.  But until now, one type has remained elusive: blood stem cells, the source of our entire complement of blood cells.

Since human embryonic stem cells (ES cells) were isolated in 1998, scientists have tried to get them to make blood stem cells. In 2007, the first induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells were made from human skin cells, and have since been used to generate multiple cell types, such as neurons and heart cells.

But no one has been able to make blood stem cells. A few have have been isolated, but they’re rare and can’t be made in enough numbers to be useful.

Now, the lab of George Daley, MD, PhD, part of Boston Children’s Stem Cell Research program as finally hit upon a way to create blood stem cells in quantity, reported today in Nature. …