Amid historically low donations, producing artificial blood remains problematic

A local official of the American Red Cross pulls no punches when it comes to the current historically low blood supply levels in the U.S.

"We've got less than a day's supply across the country in every blood type," said Jennifer Sokolowski, executive director of Cape Girardeau-based Red Cross Southeast Missouri and Northeast Arkansas (SEMO NEAR) chapter.

"We used to be able to tell the hospitals we serve that we were good for a week out, but no longer. In our SEMO NEAR region, the recent bad weather resulted in a loss of more than 1,700 donations. We're still in a crisis," she added.

Artificial blood

George Wettach

The medical community has been aware for centuries of the desire to find an alternative to voluntary donations, said George Wettach, M.D., chief of pathology at SoutheastHEALTH and on the faculty at St. Louis's Washington University.

Alicia M. Henao Uribe

"Long before the era of modern medicine, doctors attempted to transfuse other types of fluid. There were reports of trying to transfuse milk, wine, even sheep's blood — and as you would expect, these early experiments did not work," Wettach said, referring to experimentation dating from the 1600s driven by desperation to replace blood lost in hemorrhaging patients.

"Even when physicians limited themselves to human blood, many of the transfused patients died quickly, and this was before the various blood types of A, B, AB and O were identified. In some cases, if you opened a vein on a donor and did the same on a recipient, connected them with some tubing and a stopcock, it would work. But in many others, it didn't — and for a long time, people didn't understand why."

Degree of difficulty

Britain's The Guardian newspaper quotes multiple medical authorities in an article titled "Why is artificial blood so hard to make?"

Author Alok Jha writes, "Because blood is made of many complex parts serving specific functions, it's tough to reproduce each one properly."

Locally, Alicia M. Henao Uribe, M.D., with Saint Francis Healthcare, concurs with the assessment.

"Blood is not only one thing. Blood is a combination of multiple substances and cells and it's not just an oxygen delivery system," said Henao Uribe, a board-certified medical oncologist and hematologist at Cape Medical Oncology, a Saint Francis medical partner.

"This has been the lowest (supply) we've had in recorded history, I think, due to a culture not tuned in with the need of the community anymore. That's a big shift in the last 30 to 50 years," she opined.

Future

The magazine Inside Science, in a Dec. 15 article made the following statement: "Experts are predicting some (synthetic blood) products could be rolled out within the next 10 years, should clinical trials prove successful."

Henao Uribe does not give much credence to such a prediction and does not see artificial synthesized blood in the foreseeable future.

"There are certain things people just throw out there without knowing much. I don't know what experts they're quoting and to me, it means nothing. Perhaps we can have some oxygen-delivery systems that may come in the next 10 to 20 years, maybe, but I don't foresee anything out in the horizon that has the potential to break through broadly," she said.

Wettach declared himself a bit more sanguine.

"I'm continually surprised by the developments that occur and I'm optimistic we could see a process that could be scaled up and mass produced certainly within my lifetime for red blood cells or platelets on a commercial scale. I'm sure many people are working on this."

Wettach sees a significant stumbling block in getting to efficacious artificial blood products, however.

"One of the challenges is running clinical trials and finding people willing to receive an experimental substance, especially if the current treatment of donated blood works so well," he said.