Blood for Everyone!

Blood Transfusions

Today the ideaXme show is going to travel around the world to Japan, to discuss the topic of artificial blood technology.

Blood transfusions save lives and improve health, but many patients requiring transfusion in 2019 still do not have timely access to safe blood.

The need for blood transfusion may arise at any time in both urban and rural areas. The unavailability of blood has led to deaths and many patients suffering from ill-health.

Blood loss from traumatic injuries is responsible for thousands of deaths annually, and even when people survive, oxygen depletion can leave tissue permanently injured. Fresh blood can only be stored for 42 days, and only lasts for a few hours un-refrigerated.

Currently, if you need to receive a blood transfusion, it must also be matched specifically with your blood type or the “universal donor” type, O negative.

An adequate and reliable supply of safe blood is normally assured by a stable base of regular, voluntary, unpaid blood donors, and they are also the safest group of donors as the prevalence of blood-borne infections is lowest among these donors.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that around 120 million units of donated blood are collected globally every year. 42% of these blood donations are collected in high-income countries, home to less than 16% of the world’s population.

Blood Substitute

A blood substitute (also called artificial blood or blood surrogate) is any substance that can be used to mimic and fulfill some functions of biological blood. It aims to provide an alternative to blood transfusion, which is transferring blood or blood-based products from one person into another. Thus far, there are no well-accepted oxygen-carrying blood substitutes, which is the typical objective of a red blood cell transfusion; however, there are widely available non-blood volume expanders for cases where only volume restoration is required.

A full substitute could be vital in settings like battlefields or rural areas without easy access to blood, used as a stopgap measure to keep the injured alive until they get to a hospital.

Also, a one-size-fits-all blood substitute would overcome all sorts of existing obstacles, ranging from not enough donations by ethnic minorities, to finding matches for rare blood types.

Dr. Manabu Kinoshita

Today’s guest joining us to go further into this topic and to discuss the challenges and possibilities of achieving a universal blood substitute, is Dr. Manabu Kinoshita, Associate Professor of Immunology, Department of Immunology and Microbiology, at the National Defense Medical College in Tokorozawa, Saitama, Japan.

Dr. Kinoshita is a surgeon who specializes in both immunology (with a focus on host-defense dynamics against surgical stress) as well as nano-medicine, including red blood cell substitutes, platelet substitutes, and nanosheets for Biological Applications such as wound healing.

The National Defense Medical College is Japan’s six-year university-level military academy under control of the Ministry of Defense whose objectives are to train future military officers who are also medical doctors and current military doctors.

Students graduate with an advanced level of theory and application of medical sciences required to conduct the missions of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and acquisition of research capability of the related fields as well as to offer training of clinical medicine.

On this show we will hear from Dr. Kinoshita:

About his background and interest in surgery, trauma, and the focus on artificial blood substitutes. An introduction to the work of the National Defense Medical College. His recent work and discoveries about his artificial blood product, profiled in the Journal of Transfusion paper entitled Combination Therapy Using Fibrinogen Y-chain peptide-coated, ADP-encapsulated Liposomes and Hemoglobin Vesicles for Trauma-induced Massive Hemorrhage in Thrombocytopenic Rabbits. His future visions for the project, and other research projects he is working on.