New breakthrough in artificial blood production

After much effort, people eventually came to the point of making suitable, cheap, easy-to-preserve artificial blood that most importantly met the ever-increasing blood fever in the world. .

A new type of artificial blood called Hemopure (Photo: ajwrb) Adrien Cappy, 55, is a railway worker with diabetes and paroxysmal arteritis that threatens left leg necrosis. Sitting on the sick bed, his left leg became as pale as the dead man's feet. After the X-ray is finished, the doctors said that the surgery must be done to restore blood circulation. Otherwise, the leg will be amputated.

At the operating room, Mr. Cappy received anesthesia, mechanical breathing and doctors used a special device to get rid of the blockage of blood, and at the same time turn a new artery in the blocked area with a circuit taken from under the right thigh skin. This simple type of surgery usually causes little bleeding, so doctors have tightened blood vessels in time. But Mr. Cappy was unlucky when blood continued to leak out more than 4 hours after surgery. The amount of blood escaping is nearly 2 liters, a large amount compared to the volume of 5-6 liters of blood contained in the human body.

In order to maintain life, blood must have five components, namely oxygen-bearing red blood cells, plasma (plasma), which carry nutrients and antibodies, pressures to bring blood to other places and promote gas exchange. , clotting factors and hemoglobin to heal wounds. Mr. Cappy lost almost all of these components of the blood or they had serious imbalances. The problem is even more serious because Mr. Cappy lives in South Africa, where more than 5 million people are infected with HIV, resulting in a scarcity of blood beyond human control.

But luckily for Mr. Cappy, the hospital has a new artificial blood called hemopure, an oxygen-based component based on hemoglobin. Hemopure is a product produced by the British Biopure Pharmaceutical Company and the only testing place is South Africa, England and the United States. This clean, pure and sterile artificial blood is the savior of today's South African hospitals.

The search for blood replacements has been around since the mid-17th century when British physicians inject sheep blood into wounded soldiers' bodies to try to save them but fail . Blood transfusion from animals to humans is immediately banned because of an immune system reaction. By the nineteenth century, doctors used other substances such as water, oil and milk also failed. Parallel is the human blood test that is most famous for the rescue of a patient in the city of Philadelphia in the United States in 1875. This is a lucky case because most patients die from the human body. Do not accept foreign blood. By the beginning of the twentieth century, people discovered a way to distinguish different blood groups to bring blood into the right body to avoid rejection.

Donated blood is usually filtered and centrifuged into specialized products such as plasma, coagulation factors, red blood cells, immune factors and proteins that wholesale prices sometimes amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars per miligram. In an effort to prevent blood supply instability, the International Red Cross established a strategic blood stock of $ 50 million.

In order to solve the scarcity of blood scarcity, hospitals need substances that are compatible with the patient's blood and can be stored at normal temperature. Most importantly, these substances must do the oxygen transport task. Through the testing process showed that adding hemoglobin carrying oxygen to liquids such as saline will not produce artificial blood because the hemoglobin molecule has not been 'reinforced', while living without life is toxic to the liver, kidneys, except when it is covered by a fat membrane of red blood cells. Hemoglobin impregnation with fat and 'chain' they cannot be polymerized.

In the US, from 1989 to 1993, artificial blood called Fluosol was licensed for use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) .

Hemopure is less viscous than human blood because it consists of small molecules that easily overcome obstacles than red blood cells and bring oxygen directly to tissues in a completely new way.(Photo: redcross)

But only 13,000 patients have been withdrawn from circulation licenses because of liver toxicity. However, this failure has not prevented at least 10 companies from researching new substances in place of blood. Headed by Biopure Company with hemopure artificial blood products. Hemopure is a solution of hemoglobin polymerization extracted from cow's blood, an abundant source of hemoglobin.

In an experiment of 350 patients in the US, 96% of patients did not have red blood cells the first day after surgery. Six weeks later, 60% of other patients did not need red blood cells. Hemopure is less viscous than human blood because it consists of small molecules that easily overcome obstacles than red blood cells and bring oxygen directly to tissues in a completely new way.

The initial success of hemopure manufacturing has created excitement for many social sectors . Neuroscientists are interested in because a blood substitute will limit the consequences of a stroke. But oncologists find that in artificial blood a means to supply oxygen to the tissues around cancer tumors, which are vulnerable to X-ray therapy. But the most important is the successful production of hemopure that will reduce the blood fever in the world today.

Hoang Phu