Each year, 5.6 million people around the world die from injuries, making uncontrolled bleeding a leading cause of preventable death. This is particularly impactful because nearly half of these injuries affect young people, creating significant social and financial burdens on the healthcare system.
Blood transfusions, using donor red blood cells (RBCs), are crucial for saving lives by restoring oxygen transport in patients who have lost a lot of blood. However, before transfusions can happen, necessary but time-consuming steps like matching donors to recipients due to the different blood groups must be completed, which can delay treatment in emergencies. Additionally, donor RBCs have a short shelf life, making it impossible to keep large stocks to use when sudden disasters occur (e.g. earthquakes, plane crashes, terrorist attacks etc.).
Thus, blood substitutes are highly sought after to overcome these limitations of donor blood. However, despite many efforts over the past few decades, no approved product for human use exists yet. Early attempts in the 1980s, driven by fears of HIV contamination in blood supplies, faced many failures. While most research has focused on creating simple oxygen carriers, real RBCs do much more, including transporting carbon dioxide, regulating nitric oxide, and acting as antioxidants—all essential and life-saving functions.
The goal of this ERC Consolidator project is to develop a synthetic RBC, called RBC MIMIC, which will replicate not only oxygen transport but the main biological functions of natural RBCs. Additionally, RBC MIMIC will be designed to perform extra tasks to address other health issues resulting from severe blood loss, aiming to create a superior blood substitute for early-stage resuscitation.
