NHS TO BEGIN FIRST WIDE-SCALE ARTIFICIAL BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS IN 2017

Massive Drop in Blood Donations Leading Health Services to Look for Blood Alternatives

The UK National Health Service (NHS) announced its plans to begin artificial blood transfusions by 2017, which will constitute the world’s first clinical trials of this kind. Artificial blood, which is any substitute that aims to replicate one particular function of real blood, will soon be tested in the UK for the first time. The goal of this research is to find an alternative to oxygen-carrying red blood cells that could be used for transfusions and also benefit those with rarer blood types. Made from hematopoietic stem cells drawn from the bone marrow of volunteers, artificial blood is based on the hemoglobin molecule, which binds oxygen in red blood cells. Hemopure, approved for human use in South Africa in 2001, is one such product based on bovine hemoglobin which is currently undergoing clinical trials in the US to help treat life-threatening anemia. The National Health Service also plans to explore umbilical cords as a rich source of hematopoietic stem cells.

Along with his colleagues, Robert Lanza of Ocata Therapeutics in Marlborough, Massachusetts first grew 100 billion red blood cells in the lab in 2008, though their technique involved the controversial use of embryonic stem cells. Luc Douay and his team at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France injected 10 billion artificial cells into human volunteers, but that only equates to 2 milliliters of blood. According to Douay, a big challenge will be to scale up the technology enough to generate sufficient artificial cells for transfusion, especially with the number of voluntary blood donors falling 40 percent in England and North Wales last year. The possible uses of synthetic substitutes based on oxygen-carrying molecules such as perfluorocarbons are also under investigation.