Chemistry World - Artificial blood

Synthetic alternatives to donor blood have been stuck in development for decades. Nina Notman reports on recent promising progress…

Human blood substitutes have been in the pipeline since the 1980s. But, for a combination of scientific and political reasons, there are none currently on the market in either Europe or the US. There are a few blood substitutes still progressing through clinical trials, and the academic community is still actively improving the products, also known as oxygen therapeutics and haemoglobin-based oxygen carriers.

'No one was interested in this type of work until HIV came in the 1980s,' explains Thomas Chang from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, an early pioneer of the field, 'and then everyone started to look into making artificial blood substitutes.'

He adds, 'we have to be ready for another HIV episode or similar when the blood might be contaminated.' It was HIV concerns that led to South Africa becoming one of the few countries so far to approve the use of a blood substitute - a product called Hemopure.