Maryland scientists working to develop artificial blood
Aim is to make product that can be stored at room temperature
Despite historic advancements in blood transfusion technology, an estimated 20,000 Americans bleed to death every year before they can be brought to the hospital, according to Dr. Allan Doctor, director of the Center for Blood Oxygen Transport and Hemostasis at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
“There’s some limited ability to give transfusions in helicopters on the way into the hospital,” said Doctor, a pediatrics professor at the Baltimore-based medical school, “but for routine ambulance runs, all you can do is just drive fast.”
Because of an evolving technology — which just received backing from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — in the not-so-distant future, doctors might have a better way of buying time for traumatically injured patients, and potentially saving their lives.
In the coming years, Doctor will lead scientists from more than a dozen universities and biotechnology companies in developing a whole blood product that is easy to use in transfusions and able to be stored at room temperature.
DARPA, a research and development agency that’s part of the U.S. Department of Defense, is providing $46.4 million in funding for the fouryear research project, the University of Maryland School of Medicine said in a recent news release.
The agency has long been interested in developing a shelf-stable whole blood product that could be used for transfusions on the battlefield, Doctor said. Fighting has changed since World War II, when field hospitals were set up just behind the front lines. Now, there aren’t clear battle lines. Injured soldiers could get trapped in cities for days at a time, with no official medical center nearby.
In Afghanistan, Doctor said, it’s estimated that between 70% to 80% of people who died in the field could have lived, if it had been possible to give them a blood transfusion outside a hospital.
To improve chances for survival, patients should have access to blood in 30 minutes or less, DARPA said in a recent news release.
“When blood donations decline — as we have seen during the COVID pandemic — that