UK Daily Mail
By Niall
Firth
Last updated at 3:59 AM on 10th July 2010
American scientists have developed 'artificial' blood that
could soon be used to treat wounded soldiers in battle.
The genetically-engineered blood is created by taking
cells from umbilical cords and using a machine to mimic the way bone marrow
works to produce mass quantities of usable units of red blood cells.
Known as 'blood pharming' the programme
was launched in 2008 by the Pentagon's experimental arm, Darpa,
to create blood to treat soldiers in far-flung battlefields.
The firm Arteriocyte, which received $1.95 million
for the project, has now sent off its first shipment of O-negative blood to the
food and drugs watchdog in the
The
blood is made by using hematopoietic cells taken from umbilical cords in a
process called ‘pharming’ –
using genetically engineered plants or animals to create mass quantities of
useful substances.
One umbilical cord can be turned into around 20
units of usable blood. A wounded soldier in the field will require an average
of six units during treatment. Making use of
umbilical cords and umbilical cord blood to generate useable blood hardly could
be called fake blood. It also insures that soldiers will receive untainted high
quality blood.
Blood cells produced using this method are 'functionally indistinguishable from
red blood cells in healthy circulation', the company claims.
‘We’re basically mimicking bone marrow in a lab environment,' Arteriocyte boss Don Brown told Wired magazine.
‘Our model works, but we need to extrapolate our production abilities to
make scale.’
If approved it could revolutionise battlefields where
a shortage of blood donors can hamper treatment of wounded soldiers.
The process of giving transfusions in war zones is also made more difficult
because donated blood has to be transported long distance before it reaches the
field hospitals where it is urgently needed.