Biopure was a company doing something similar in the US. They imploded in the early 2000s, but they had created an "oxygen therapeutic" (blood substitute) by isolating hemoglobin based oxygen carrying molecules FROM COW BLOOD!
The fact that they weren't using whole red blood cells meant the product was typeless, room temp stable, and better at perfusing around arterial blockages and into tissue since the molecules were so small.
Unfortunately, the company was kind of a mess. They managed to get licensed for sale in South Africa, and in the US for the veterinary product, but never managed FDA approval. It's a shame. Everyone could see the promise of the product, and it really actually worked, but they just couldn't seem to make the business viable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopure
Edit: When I say they imploded, I really mean it. They got prosecuted for misleading statements to investors about the state of US clinical trials, and the legal proceedings became farcical.
"On March 11, 2009 [Senior VP] Howard Richman pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court and admitted he had instructed his lawyers to tell a judge he was gravely ill with colon cancer. He also admitted to posing as his doctor in a phone call with his lawyer so that she would tell the judge that his cancer had spread and that he was undergoing chemotherapy."
That guys was sentenced to 3 years in prison. Here's hoping this new blood substitute has a happier outcome!
One more anecdote. WADA, the World Anti Doping Agency, had to specifically address using hemoglobin based blood substitutes for doping.
https://www.wada-ama.org/en/resources/scientific-research/de...
This class of products is room temperatures stable, and typeless, and it increases oxygen carrying capacity basically immediately. You can imagine how useful that would be for something like a Tour De France team. Keep a half dozen units of fake blood in your team bus. No special equipment. No rigorous temp control. You can give any unit to any one of your athletes without worrying about compatibility. You can administer it on race day, eliminating any chance of being caught in the runup to your event.
Obviously Biopure condemned off-label use of their product for blood doping, but behind closed doors they were super proud that it was seen as effective enough to be called out by name by WADA. No publicity is bad publicity and all that.
What happens to the IP when this happens? If the product works but wasn't supported by the right company how does it not get picked up by someone more competent?
I fondly remember trying to angel invest in BioPure, thank you for the flashback!
They just pumped like straight hemoglobin in the blood and it worked? No antibody response? They didn’t just like fall apart? Creative. I like it.
How well did that one work?
There was another one in the US called "PolyHeme" which did not go well - https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=PolyHeme
The controversy around that one was not only that it did not work as well as it could (more patients had heart attacks than with saline), but that it was trialled on trauma patients without their explicit consent - implied consent was used, and people in trial areas could opt-out by requesting a bracelet. Problematic to say the least...
The artificial blood is created by extracting hemoglobin — a protein containing iron that facilitates the transportation of oxygen in red blood cells — from expired donor blood. It is then encased in a protective shell to create stable, virus-free artificial red blood cells. As these artificial cells have no blood type, there is no need for compatibility testing.
Apparently their first target is soon-to-expire donor blood erythrocytes — which makes this essentially a (pretty major) scalability improvement in how far existing donor blood goes.
However, that being said: hemoglobin’s just a protein. Recombinant hemoglobin isn’t overly challenging to produce — we do it already. (Currently mostly animal hemoglobin, for vegan meat — but it’s no different to produce human hemoglobin.) We don’t bother with synthesizing human hemoglobin because there’s (until now) no way to go from having a protein to having useful cells serving an erythrocytic function. This research changes that — and so will strongly motivate demand for such production. I would bet money that, 5–10 years out, you’ll be able to buy bags — even drums — of recombinant human hemoglobin from any biopharma supplier.
My understanding is a huge issue with blood donation is expiry, and therefore the need for consistent year-round donation - when a disaster occurs there's often a spike in donations but the surplus gets thrown away. A mechanism that can make use of expired blood that works for all blood types and extends the shelf life seems extremely valuable.
“No need for compatibility testing” – I think that’s a really important feature. Not everyone can accept all types of blood. It becomes a real challenge when a person requires constant transfusions and can only accept one specific blood type.
Seems as if the long shelf life vs 42 days for human blood is the biggest advantage. You can use blood about to expire to make this, and it will last 2-5 years more
Interesting to see. There's been some other efforts in this space, from blood products derived to chemically derived (e.g. perflurocarbons, which carry many multiples of what hemoglobin can carry, oxygen-wise).
There's definitely a need for a safe, shelf stable blood substitute.
Though, I'd argue that this isn't artificial blood, it's artificially replacing only the oxygen carrying role of blood -- there's nothing in this product that is producing clotting, fighting disease, managing hormones, fueling cells, etc. Still, excited to see this progress, transfusions are still a risky bet, and having something that can provide at least the O2 capacity in a safer package is very welcome.
You can see my top-level comment for more context, but I've seen other products in this space called "oxygen therapeutics" for exactly this reason. They're not really blood, they're an oxygen delivery system. It seemed like a pedantic distinction when I first heard the term, but I think you make some good points about why the distinction is meaningful.
I think most transfusions after blood loss are also only red blood cells, so all these other functions are not transferred.
It's odd. It seems like this is not the first Japanese team to have developped artificial blood. I did a quick search and it seems there was another team at least as early as 2019 (https://web.archive.org/web/20201111233217/http://www.asahi....)
So what's different this time?
(Upon further examination, the 2019 team at the National Defense Medical College also had Dr Hiromi Sakai. So why is this news now?)
In your link they have only done tests on rabbits.
In this post they have already done some tests on humans and are now increasing the dosage since March.
> Small-scale studies began in 2022. Three groups of four healthy male volunteers aged 20 to 50 received a single intravenous injection of hemoglobin vesicles — artificial oxygen carriers that mimic the structure of red blood cells — in increasing amounts, up to 100 milliliters. While some participants experienced mild side effects, there were no significant changes in vital signs, including blood pressure. Building on that success, Sakai announced that his team was accelerating the process last July. In March, it started administering between 100 and 400 milliliters of the artificial blood cell solution to volunteers.
> If no side effects are confirmed, the trial will shift to examining the treatment’s efficacy and safety. It aims to put the artificial red blood cells into practical use by around 2030.
Study trial in question: https://ashpublications.org/bloodadvances/article/6/21/5711/...
When I saw "compatible with all blood types", I thought it was another of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute#Perfluorocarb... "full synthetic" ones, of which one is already in active use in Mexico and Russia.
"PFC solutions can carry oxygen so well that mammals, including humans, can survive breathing liquid PFC solution, called liquid breathing."
U.S. company Kalocyte is developing an artificial blood that is shelf-stable. DARPA has been partnering with them. They were featured in an article in the New Yorker earlier this year: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/02/10/the-long-quest...
guessing it's this liposome tech (same lead author, sakai): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33845721/
more on what I assume is their hemoglobin prep process: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30715862/
and if you want to make your own liposomes, instructions here https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8234105/
-2.5% to US GDP
Explaining the joke: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/why-blood-makes-up-over-2poi...
That said, I'm sure I recently saw some blog-post about how the 2-2.5% amounts are significantly overblown because that's counting export-categories of products can sometimes contain human blood derivatives as an ingredient, rather than straight-up RBCs/plasma.
Hmmm, nothing yet on a quick Google search, but that doesn't mean as much these days...
Amazing! Literally the premise of the HBO show _True Blood_ from the 2000s. Japanese scientists invent artificial blood which allows vampires to "come out of the coffin".
OK, I guess we'll wait and see about the vampires. But the blood substitute and Japanese scientists thing was spot-on, at least.
Since production relies on donor blood, I guess this product will not be of any help to members of Jehova's Winesses.
I used to be a Jehovah's witness when I was younger and I gotta say there sure were a lot of accounts of kids dying because their parents and the jws didn't want blood. Sure they got praised for their steadfastness after the fact but I often wonder how many would still be alive. Not to say blood transfusions are perfect or never cause problems but I mean come on.
I'm okay with that
"Three groups of four healthy male volunteers aged 20 to 50 received a single intravenous injection "
Tested in 12 people, once. Hmm...
"The artificial blood is created by extracting hemoglobin — a protein containing iron that facilitates the transportation of oxygen in red blood cells — from donor blood"
So needs blood as a raw material.
You're leaving out the following statement that make it clear it wasn't "once".
- "in increasing amounts, up to 100 milliliters."
They went through a process of increasing the dosage and monitoring the subjects.
Seems like a plot point to a CW vampire show…
HBO, wasn't it?
Cue Russell Edgington
Since it's extracted from expired blood we could still theoretically be living in a "Daybreakers" timeline. ;)
What implications might this have for battlefield medicine?
Don't get your hopes up. This is astronomically away from anything real. The hard part hasn't even started.
All they know right now is that humans can tolerate their blood product. They have no idea if it actually helps. And testing that is going to be an ethical mess.
We've already been through this! PolyHeme was developed for decades, went into trials in 2009, and was a disaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PolyHeme
Testing PolyHeme was a landmark in research ethics in the US. Obviously not in a good way. The problem is that you can only test these things in people who are very sick and then you hope that you aren't killing them. That's sketchy at best.
PolyHeme went a step further and tested on people without their consent in secret. https://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(06)02263-3/fu...
They probably killed a dozen people or so. Lets hope this has a better outcome.
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Blood donation organizations hate this one trick!
LOL. The the artificial blood is made by extracting the hemoglobin from expired blood, that is blood donated more than 42 days ago.