In the UK, blood is normally provided by volunteer donors through a nationally funded scheme that ensures safety and quality. For patients with very rare blood groups, as well as some patients who have multiple red cell antibodies, finding compatible blood can be extremely difficult and, at times impossible. This can result in compromised compatibility of blood or delays in provision, which can contribute to morbidity or death. Therefore an alternative, practical and cost-effective solution to conventional donated blood is needed to stabilise and guarantee the donor supply.
Researchers at Imperial College London have designed and fabricated a ‘blood factory’ that mimics the
architecture and function of the bone marrow in vivo and allows continuous harvesting of red blood cells.
The team plan to optimise the design and fabrication of the blood factory to ensure the continuous production of ‘clinically-relevant’ quality red blood cells. Initially, this technology could complement the existing volunteer donor blood supply, in areas of shortfall or special needs. Ultimately, blood donation could be replaced and transfusion needs can be made by such ‘red blood cell factories’.
This research is being co-ordinated by Professor Sakis Mantalaris who said: “Our design is bio-inspired which means we looked at what nature does and we tried to engineer a bioreactor that mimics that structure. The idea of making blood is not a new one, but the attempts so far and the theoretical calculations clearly indicate that it will take say £10,000 or more to produce a pint of blood, so we have tried to make sure that our design is cost effective.
The ultimate goal of this research is to do away with blood donations, so any transfusion that needs to take place would not require a donation. Instead of having to collect and store blood we would actually be making blood from core blood. However that scenario is a very long way away. So, we have looked at the current needs of the National Blood Service and there are particular cases where sourcing blood from donors is extremely difficult. For example where people have developed immune responses towards receiving blood donations.
In cases such as these sourcing the blood is very difficult, so, once preclinical testing is complete, we plan to conduct a clinical trial using these very few, but extremely rare cases where blood is difficult to obtain.
The blood can be produced per type, such as O negative, or on a per patient basis. At the moment we are using core blood that is stored, so we are growing blood based on a type. Obviously O negative is the blood to grow, but for cases where you need donations for specific patients, this would require many months or years to grow the blood and so would be done only on a case by case basis.”
Sources:
Imperial College London
Big Ideas for the Future Report
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