Synthetic Blood World Conferance Toyko Japan
Dr Thomas C. Drees was a guest speaker.
I am going to cover his outline of his talk as I have time..
Introduction:
All of the research carried out over the last 80 years has been on "whole" blood substitutes per se but on red blood cell substitutes only. Since whole blood is very complex, with some hundreds of cells, factors, fractions, platelets, fibrins, firbrids, ect. there will never be a "whole" blood substitute.
Developement:
Some history of substitutes developed will be shown. The first attempts at manufacturing blood substitutes were in World War I, when the Bristish and US Armies did some research on blood substitutes, without success. The US Army continued research though World war II at Letterman hospital, and untill 30 years ago, all of the research was outdated hemoglobin, which was the common sense raw material, since it was diposed of two months after it was collected and became outdated, useless transfused. In the 1070's, one third of all blood donated, in the US was destroyed because it became outdated before it was able to be used. Now the population of outdated blood is down to 3%. Baxter, with a contract from the Army in the 1980's tried to manufacture according to the Army's formula, but then switched to their own Hemoglobin product. Northfield Labs started working on their own hemoglobin formula 30 years ago..
To be continued...... |
