We need a lot of blood. In the US, over 41,000 blood donations are required for patients in need – every single day. Since not everyone can (or is willing to) donate blood, science has been working to come up with a solution for our blood shortage – and Romanian researchers may have done just that.
Overlooking for a moment that Romania is the home of Dracula and basically where vampires were invented so, yeah, this is a little weird; but, a team of Romanian researchers has developed synthetic blood in a laboratory, and found their first test use results pretty encouraging.
The Romanian Tru Blood is made from water, salt, albumin, and a marine worm protein called hemerythrin (yum!), which transports and stores oxygen. Hemerythrin also makes the blood stress-resistant, which means this is the first type of artificial blood that doesn’t turn toxic under stress.
The successful trials were completed using mice, and they’re still a couple of years away from human trials, but they’re on the right track. Also, Spike is probably really, really stoked.
(via I F*cking Love Science, image via Scott Beale)
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Published: Nov 2, 2013 01:32 pm