The three "R"s of blood transfusion in 2020; routine, reliable and robust

To predict the timing and nature of future changes in the practice of blood transfusion, several factors must be considered. The historical rate of change of a scientific field can often provide a rough guide to the rate of future progress. To improve the accuracy of these predictions, historical rates must be adjusted to take into account the decelerating effects of technological or methodological barriers to progress, together with the potentially accelerating effects of transformative technology breakthroughs and unmet needs in the field that act as drivers for change. The cumulative impact of unpredictable and, often, limited availability of traditional blood donors, increasingly elderly populations, the potential for storage-associated adverse events, and increasingly prevalent transfusion-transmittable diseases is likely to provide significant drive to develop transformational alternatives to current transfusion practices. Considering the current stage of development of stem cell-based therapeutics and the rates of change in clinically compatible bioreactors and cell sorting systems, it is reasonable to believe that stem cell-based ex vivo manufacture of blood components will become routine, robust, and reliable within the next decade.