Artificial Blood Could End Healthcare's Reliance On Blood Donors

In the USA, someone needs a blood transfusion every two seconds, day and night: more than 41, 000 every day. And while the average requirement is around three pints, some people require far more. The average car accident victim requires as much as 100 pints of blood, and no, that's not a typo. Huge transfusions are necessary to maintain blood flow in someone who would otherwise bleed to death in minutes. Meanwhile, many people with cancer require blood transfusions daily, especially during chemotherapy. There are also conditions including thassalemia which are usually treated with transfusion.

So while over 15 million people donated blood in the USA last year, it's still nothing like enough. And in some developing countries, there's a permament, catastrophic blood shortage. 

We get around this to some extent by splitting blood up into blood products.

Plasma

Plasma is the fluid that carries all the other blood components. Plasma is processed to produce clotting factor, which helps people with blood clotting disorders who don't need whole blood, and albumin. Albumin is used in treating burns victims and anyone who has suffered severe blood loss.

White Blood Cells

These are a vital component of the immune system, and people with serious inferctions that don't respond to antibiotics sometimes respond to having their immune systems beefed up by transfusions of white blood cells - reinforcements for their immune systems.

Platelets

Platelets are the part of blood that actually forms clots. For various reasons, some people have low [platelet count and bruise or bleed easily. Those people benefit from platelet transfusions.

Immunoglobulins

Immunogloulins are used top help vulnerable or immunocompromised people because they're active against specific diseases, so being given a transfusion of immunoglobulins form someone who is resistant to, say, chicken-pox can confer immunity on the person receiving the transfusion.

And finally...

Red Blood Cells

Red blood cells carry oxygen around the body. Blood has a lot of jobs, as we've seen. But if the red cells aren't doing their job, the results can be fatal. So this blood conponent is the most vital and one of the most widely needed. 

Then there are people with rare blood types. While there may be enough blood in the system as a whole to treat everyone with an unusual blood type, what happens if it's not on hand in the emergency room when it's needed? If it's halfway across the state, it just the same as not being there at all, from that patient's point of view.

READ Five Reasons For Giving Blood

Artificial Blood: Ready In 2017?

The team, headed by Professor Marc Turner, has succeeded in producing red blood cells that are good enough for human use. Crucially, the cells are blood type O-, an extremely rare blood typewhich is compatible with all other types, meaning the cells could be transfused into anyone. 

That would soplve one of the most serious blood transfusion problkems:at the end of the supply chain, in remote, isolated or developing locations, there may not be an absolute shortage of blood — but there's often a shortage of a specific type of blood.

The work of Professor Turner's team isn't entirely unique — the problem is an old one and various solutions including animal blood have been tried in the past. A product called HemaPure, derived form bovine (cow) hemoglobin, was OK-ed in South Africa in 2001 and is undergoing trials in the UK and elsewhere. In 2013, a team working out of the European city of Cluj-Napoca revealed thay had a system for creating blood components from proteins derived from sea animals. (Would they have got as much attention if Cluj-Napoca wasn't historically in Transylvania? Hard to say.(Source: MedicalDaily.com)) However, while artificial blood has been attempted in the past, it's never been of sufficient quality to use with humans before. 

"We have made red blood cells that are fit to go in a person’s body. Before now, we haven’t really had that," said study leader Professor Marc Turner. "Although similar research has been conducted elsewhere, this is the first time anybody has manufactured blood to the appropriate quality and safety standards for transfusion into a human being." (Source: The Scientist).

The team pursued a new tack, by working with stem cells donated by consenting mothers from umbilical cord stem cells. Under laboratory conditions those stem cells were encouraged to grow into red blood cells, which are the scarcest blood product. Obviously, that means these aren't really "artificial blood cells." Instead, they are red cells grown from human stem cells. However, they have several advantages over donor cells, including being free from disease. Because they have never been inside a human body, they are free from hepatitis, HIV and other blood-borne disease. 

The new cells are "comparable if not identical to the cells from a donor," in the words of team member Nick Watkins.

As Professor Turner, the leader of the study, says, "a single unit of blood contains a trillion red blood cells. There are two million units of blood transfused in the UK each year" — so moving from successful trials in animals, through human trials, to full production, will be tricky.

READ Blood Tests: What Do They Tell?

Dr Ted Bianco, Director of Technology Transfers at the Wellcome Trust, which funded the $7.5m research, says: "One should not underestimate the challenge of translating the science into routine procedures for the clinic. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the challenge Professor Turner and colleagues have set out to address, which is to replace the human blood donor as the source of supply for life-saving transfusions."