Artificial Blood: Sci-Fi Breakthrough or False Hope?
Vesicle Trials
Researchers at Nara University in Nara, Japan have created 'hemoglobin vesicles' (HbVs): Haemoglobin encapsulated within a lipid shell that mimics red blood cells. In a 2022 trial, investigators injected 100 mL of HbVs into 12 healthy volunteers, with no serious adverse events reported.
The team plans to administer up to 400 mL to a larger cohort. If safety is confirmed, future studies will assess haemodynamic and respiratory effectiveness. Investigators hope to achieve industrial production and clinical use by 2030.
Storage Benefits
Artificial blood offers two key advantages over donor blood. First, it can be stored at room temperature for up to 2 years or up to 5 years if frozen, whereas donated blood expires after 6 weeks. Second, HbVs lack ABO and Rh antigens, making them theoretically compatible with all recipients. Notably, the solution turned purple.
Failed Attempts
The quest for artificial blood holds great promise, as tens of thousands die annually from blood shortages, particularly in low-income countries. However, previous efforts have been repeatedly stalled. In 2011, Luc Douay, MD, PhD, senior study author and Professor of Haematology at Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France, performed France's first transfusion using stem cell-derived red cells. In Japan, military physicians transfused experimental blood into rabbits in 2019 and reported encouraging results from stem cell-derived erythrocyte injections in the United Kingdom in 2022.
'All attempts have failed so far,' Douay said in 2017. While the latest Japanese trials offer renewed hope, experts emphasise the need to expand natural blood donation programs.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
How Princess Charlene of Monaco Is Turning a 'Devastating' Childhood Tragedy into a Mission to Save Lives
The royal said in a new interview about her cousin's childhood death, "I don't think that kind of pain ever really goes away" NEED TO KNOW Princess Charlene of Monaco is opening up about the "devastating" tragedy that affected her family when she was a child Prince Albert's wife has since adopted water safety as one of her royal causes Before she married the Sovereign Prince of Monaco, Charlene was a professional swimmer who competed in the Olympics Princess Charlene of Monaco is opening up about the family tragedy that fuels her passion for promoting one of her closest causes. In a new interview with Ouest-France, the former Olympic swimmer revealed that the drowning death of her cousin Richard at age 5, when she was also a child, has inspired her advocacy around water safety. "Richard drowned in a river, very close to my uncle's house. He was only five years old. It was devastating for our whole family. I don't think that kind of pain ever really goes away," Princess Charlene told the outlet, the Monaco Tribune reported on Aug. 14. Prince Albert's wife, 47, added that learning to swim "should be a fundamental right, just like learning to read." "Cost should never be a barrier to acquiring a life-saving skill," Charlene said. The new interview comes as Princess Charlene was "deeply concerned by the sharp rise in the number of drownings" during the summer season. According to the Monaco Tribune, there have been 193 drowning deaths in France in June and July. The royal has made water safety the focus of her foundation, Fondation Princesse Charlène de Monaco, and champions this effort through three programs: Learn to Swim, Water Safety and Sport and Education. The foundation was established in 2014 and has helped over one million people in over 43 countries to date, working to prevent drowning and inspire children through sport. Princess Charlene acknowledged that Monaco is fortunate to have "high-quality facilities and supervision," but emphasized that "vigilance is still necessary" and that "nowhere is totally safe." According to a statement from the Princely Palace of Monaco, swim lessons are prioritized in Monaco from nursery school onwards, "so that every child can develop safely in the water." Earlier this summer, Princess Charlene hit the ground for this mission and attended the annual Water Safety Day organized by her foundation. On June 17, she stepped out at Larvotto Beach to explore and support the programs designed to introduce young people to lifesaving skills, water safety and rescue, appearing at the event attended by almost 100 5th and 6th-grade students from Monegasque middle schools. Before she married the Sovereign Prince of Monaco in 2011, Princess Charlene (née Wittstock) was a professional swimmer who competed for her home country of South Africa at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. It proved to be the same year that she met her future husband, Albert, at a swimming competition in Monaco, and the couple would announce their engagement a decade later. Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more! Princess Charlene and Prince Albert went on to welcome twins, Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, now 10, and the family most recently appeared together at the community celebration commemorating the 20th anniversary of his accession to the throne. Read the original article on People
Gizmodo
5 hours ago
- Gizmodo
Why Pooping on Planes Might Actually Be a Good Thing
Researchers have developed a new critical warning system for the spread of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) superbugs: poop and pee from airplane bathrooms. Scientists predict that by 2050, AMR superbugs, or pathogens that don't respond to antimicrobial medicines, might take more lives than cancer. As such, it's critical for countries to keep an eye on the global propagation of these dangerous pathogens, which can travel with people, in order to best prepare for future infections. In a study published in May in the journal Microbiology Spectrum, a team of international researchers suggests that aircraft toilet wastewater could warn authorities about the arrival of such superbugs. 'Long-haul flight aircraft wastewater may serve as a representative microbial footprint, often of mixed country origin, offering valuable insight into the movement of pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) on a global scale,' the team wrote in the study. 'Herein, we present a proof-of-concept for aircraft-based surveillance of AMR by investigating lavatory wastewater samples from 44 repatriation flights to Australia departing from nine countries.' The analysis revealed nine dangerous pathogens, including some superbugs that are resistant to more than one drug. The team investigated the superbugs' genetic signatures and antibiotic resistance gene (ARG) profiles, finding a gene that lends resistance to last-resort antibiotics on 17 flights. Interestingly, this dangerous gene was not present in Australia's urban wastewater at the time, indicating its arrival via international travel. All 44 flight samples had five out of the nine superbugs. 'Aircraft wastewater captures microbial signatures from passengers across different continents, offering a non-invasive, cost-effective way to monitor threats like AMR,' Warish Ahmed, a senior author of the study and researcher from CSIRO, said in a University of South Australia statement. Eighteen of the flights came from India, 14 from the United Kingdom, six from Germany, and one each from France, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, South Africa, Japan, and Indonesia. According to Nicholas Ashbolt, a co-author of the study and a microbiologist at the University of South Australia, flights from Asia, especially from India, revealed greater concentrations of antibiotic-resistance genes than those from Europe and the United Kingdom. These distinctions could be due to differences in antibiotic use, water sanitation, population density, and public health policies. 'International travel is one of the major drivers of AMR spread,' said Yawen Liu, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at Xiamen University. 'By monitoring aircraft wastewater, we can potentially detect and track antibiotic resistance genes before they become established in local environments.' Tuberculosis, influenza, and SARS-CoV-2, for example, can also spread by air travel. While the researchers collected the wastewater samples from Covid-19 pandemic repatriation flights, potentially swaying passenger demographics, they argue that similar methods can also work for regular international travel. 'With AMR projected to cause more than 39 million deaths globally by 2050, the need for innovative surveillance tools is urgent,' Ashbolt concluded. 'Aircraft wastewater monitoring could complement existing public health systems, providing early warnings of emerging superbug threats.'
Gizmodo
6 hours ago
- Gizmodo
Devastating Myanmar Earthquake Hints at What's in Store for California
On March 28, a devastating magnitude 7.7 earthquake rocked Myanmar, splitting the Sagaing Fault at speeds of over 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) per second. You know which other fault resembles the Sagaing one? The San Andreas Fault in California, where seismologists have been expecting 'the big one' for years. In a study published on August 11 in the journal PNAS, a team of researchers used satellite images of the Sagaing Fault's movement to enhance computer models that predict how similar faults might move in the future. Their research suggests that strike-slip faults, like the Sagaing and the San Andreas, could produce earthquakes unlike—and perhaps much bigger than—past known seismic events. 'We use remote sensing observations to document surface deformation caused by the 2025 Mw7.7 Mandalay earthquake,' the researchers wrote in the paper. 'This event is a unique case of an extremely long (~510 km [317 miles]) and sustained supershear rupture probably favored by the rather smooth and continuous geometry of this section of the structurally mature Sagaing Fault.' Given the Sagaing fault's past recorded earthquakes, researchers had predicted that a strong earthquake would take place on a 186-mile (300-kilometer) stretch that hadn't experienced a large earthquake since 1839. According to the seismic gap hypothesis, such 'stuck' parts of a fault should eventually slip and 'catch up,' according to a California Institute of Technology (Caltech) statement. The seismologists got it right—in March, this section of the Sagaing fault fractured. But so did another over 124 miles (200 km), meaning the fault did more than just catch up. Shocking Video Shows Earth Tearing Open During Myanmar's Earthquake in March Strike-slip faults consist of boundaries where slabs of earth grind horizontally past each other in opposite directions, accumulating stress. When the stress is enough, the fault slips and the earth slides quickly, triggering an earthquake. The devastating Myanmar earthquake offers insight into the San Andreas Fault's future seismic potential, since both it and the Sagaing Fault are long, straight strike-slip faults. 'The study shows that future earthquakes might not simply repeat past known earthquakes,' said Jean-Philippe Avouac, director of Caltech's Center for Geomechanics and Mitigation of Geohazards. 'Successive ruptures of a given fault, even as simple as the Sagaing or the San Andreas faults, can be very different and can release even more than the deficit of slip since the last event.' The March earthquake in Myanmar 'turned out to be an ideal case to apply image correlation methods [techniques to compare images before and after a geological event] that were developed by our research group,' explained Solène Antoine, first author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in geology at Caltech. 'They allow us to measure ground displacements at the fault.' This approach revealed that the 311-mile (500-km) section of the Sagaing fault moved a net of 9 feet (3 meters) because of the earthquake, meaning the eastern side of the north-south fault moved that distance southward in relation to the western side. The researchers argue that models have to take into account the most recent fault slips, slip location, and slip distance to provide informed seismic hazard predictions for specific time periods—for example, the next 10 years—and not just any given timespan for an area. This is what current models do, mostly using earthquake statistics. 'In addition, historical records are generally far too short for statistical models to represent the full range of possible earthquakes and eventual patterns in earthquake recurrence,' Avouac explained. 'Physics-based models provide an alternative approach with the advantage that they could, in principle, be tuned to observations and used for time-dependent forecast.' While researchers still can't predict exactly when an earthquake will strike, every new observation helps us understand and hopefully better prepare for the natural disasters that continue claiming lives all over the world.
