Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology succeeded to make human blood from embryonic stem cell, a method seen as a potential new way to deal with the problem of insufficient blood supplies most states are currently confronting with.

“This is a scalable process, and there’s virtually no limit to the amount of blood you could produce, given the time and resources,” Robert Lanza, vice president of medical and scientific development for Advanced Cell, said.

The created blood cells were able to carry oxygen the same way as the normal ones. Moreover, they appear to be able to deliver it to the tissue correctly. The researchers further unveiled that 65 percent of these cells are able to reach full maturity and shed their nucleus.

Other researchers had previously created red blood cells using stem cells but the ACT experiment succeeded to produce between 10 billion and 100 billion red blood cells from a six-well plate of embryonic stem cells.

The next goal of the company is to see how the cells function in living beings. They hope that one day that can use this blood in human transfusions.

This new method of creating cells could put an end to the nation’s chronic problems with blood shortages and ease worries about contamination. There is one impediment however, as the cost of producing one unit of blood using this method raises to a few thousands dollars.

Roger Dodd of the American Red Cross said that manufacturing blood is “an ambitious goal” that would likely cost far more per pint than donated blood.