Every year in the United States, tens of thousands of individuals bleed to death before they reach a hospital. This is due to the fact that blood, which would spoil too quickly without proper refrigeration, cannot be regularly transported by ambulances, medical helicopters, or military medics.
In order to save lives, scientists have been working to create artificial blood that can be kept in powdered form and instantly reconstituted by medical professionals.
A white rabbit is lying on the floor of a cage at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, where some of this study is being done. It is located in a “special intensive care unit that we’ve created for our rabbit resuscitation,” according to school scientist Dr. Allan Doctor.
To mimic what would happen to a person bleeding from an injury, such a car accident or a wound sustained on the battlefield, the doctor’s team simply drained the animal’s blood.
“This bunny remains stunned. He’s lying quite still, as you can see. Doctor describes it as though he was present at the scene of an accident. “If we didn’t do anything, it would die.”
Today, however, the doctor and his team will save this rabbit. They intend to inject him with a substance that they believe will finally allow them to accomplish a goal that has thwarted scientists for decades: creating fake blood that is both safe and effective.
Danielle Waters, a technician on Doctor’s team, says, “Good bunny,” as she carefully raises the rabbit and begins giving him three large syringes of synthetic blood.
The protein hemoglobin, which provides oxygen to the body, is used by the doctor’s team to create synthetic blood. In essence, the researchers create artificial red blood cells by extracting hemoglobin from expired blood and encasing the protein in a fat bubble.
The invention that the doctor believes would address the safety issues brought up by previous attempts to create synthetic blood is the protective bubble. Hemoglobin was employed in these other attempts as well, although he warns that exposed hemoglobin can be harmful to organs.
“The hemoglobin inside a cell must be covered. “It’s safe and effective because it’s an artificial cell,” the doctor explains.
The artificial red blood cells are then freeze-dried by the scientists to create a powder that will last till an emergency.
“It’s designed so that at the moment it’s needed, a medic can mix it with water and within a minute you have blood,” the doctor explains.
It is easily transportable and has a shelf life of years. The goal is to be able to administer a transfusion at the scene of an accident,” the doctor explains.
Stopping preventable deaths
Military doctors could utilize fake blood to save injured soldiers in addition to emergency treatment. In addition to other components that facilitate clotting and regulate blood pressure, the Defense Department is investing over $58 million to support a consortium that is creating synthetic blood for doctors.
According to Col. Jeremy Pamplin, project manager of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, “hemorrhage remains the leading preventable cause of death on the battlefield today.” “That’s a real problem for the military and for the civilian world.”
The doctor is hopeful that his team’s ErythroMer artificial red blood cells could be the solution to that issue. The doctor is the chief scientific officer and board member of KaloCyteto, the company he co-founded to produce the blood.
“We’ve been able to successfully recapitulate all the functions of blood that are important for a resuscitation in a system that can be stored for years at ambient temperature and be used at the scene of an accident,” according to him.
Promising results in animal tests
After roughly ten minutes, Waters returns to the lab and finishes injecting the rabbit with all three vials of synthetic blood.
She says, “My goodness, bunny, you did it,” and returns him to his cage. “There we go.”
The rabbit’s heart rate, blood pressure, and other critical parameters have almost instantly returned to normal on a monitor that tracks vital signs. He is beginning to behave normally again, including drinking water and getting around independently.
“He’s very pink, which is a really good sign,” the doctor says. “He has pink eyes. He has pink ears. He has a lot of oxygen in his blood, and it’s being dispersed efficiently, which is encouraging. He is breathing calmly and contentedly. The speed at which it can function is astounding.
After testing their fake blood on hundreds of rabbits, the doctor’s team has concluded that it is both safe and effective.
“It would change the way that we could take care of people who are bleeding outside of hospitals,” the doctor stated. “It’d be transformative.”
This rabbit, like the others used in these tests, will eventually be put down so that the researchers may conduct a necropsy and ensure that no tissue or organs were harmed by the artificial blood.
Human trials still to come
The doctor says he still has to convince the Food and Drug Administration that his artificial blood would be safe and beneficial for humans, even though the results thus far seem encouraging.
However, he intends to begin human testing in two years. A comparable synthetic blood is already being tested on humans by a Japanese team.
“I’m very hopeful,” the doctor declares.
Other professionals are still wary. Numerous encouraging attempts to produce artificial blood ultimately turned out to be risky.
“I think it’s a reasonable approach,” says Tim Estep, a scientist with Chart Biotech Consulting who advises businesses creating fake blood.
“But because this field has been so challenging, the proof will be in the clinical trials,” he states. “While I’m overall optimistic, placing a bet on any one technology right now is overall difficult.”
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