Severe aplastic anemia (SAA) is a life-threatening blood disease which can be effectively treated with immunosuppressive drug regimens or allogeneic stem cell transplantation. However, 20-40% of patients without transplant options do not respond to immunosuppressive therapies, and have persistent severe thrombocytopenia. Even patients that respond to immunosuppressive therapies with an improvement in their life-threatening neutropenia sometimes have persistent thrombocytopenia. Both groups of patients (i.e. nonresponders to immunosuppressive therapy and responders with persistent thrombocytopenia) require regular platelet transfusions, which are expensive and inconvenient, and are a risk for further serious bleeding complications.