July 10, 2007 - CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
The Defense Department’s research department is asking businesses to come up with an unusual product: blood.
In a recent solicitation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said it wants to replace the system of using donor blood for transfusions with an idea called “Blood Pharming,” or making blood cells using samples taken from humans as starting material.
“The vision for the Blood Pharming Program is to develop novel technologies to enable in vitro production of red blood cells that are untainted, readily available and free of storage lesions,” the solicitation says. Storage lesions are the result of damage blood undergoes during long-term storage.
The ultimate goal of blood pharming is to develop an automated system capable of producing transfusable amounts of “universal donor” Type O negative blood. Such a system would consist of a self-renewing starter population of cells and a means of harvesting and packaging transfusable cells, the solicitation says.
It specifically states that generated red blood cells should have only the properties and function of donor cells — no more, no less. Red blood cells are the oxygen-bearing component of blood, and the part of blood most often transfused in battlefield trauma care (other transfused components include plasma, platelets and coagulants).
DARPA held a workshop on the program in May and development teams presented relevant research. Last week DARPA released a Broad Agency Announcement asking for companies to submit their proposals for blood pharming. Companies must respond to the solicitation by Feb. 8, 2008. Anyone accepted to develop the program will have to do so over a 36-month period of three phases.
According to DARPA, the transfusion of blood cells has been an important part of military medicine since the mid-20th century. But the transfusion system is limited by several factors. According to the solicitation, military recruitment challenges have affected the donor base.
And the nature of blood itself creates another issue: It does not store well and can develop lesions that could trigger inflammation and other immunologic responses in recipients. For seriously injured soldiers, those reactions could compound the physical trauma they have already experienced, the solicitation says.
The document notes that there are technological gaps that must be bridged before blood pharming could replace transfusions. While scientists have been able to produce red blood cells using progenitor samples taken from bone marrow, umbilical cords or blood that has been separated into its components, no one has been able to use a progenitor source to create new cells on a large scale.
DARPA calls its Blood Pharming initiative “an extremely aggressive, milestone-driven program,” that will require participants to submit to regular checks for progress. Those who make it past the proposal stage will have to demonstrate that their system can produce 10 units of Type O negative per week for four weeks.
They will also have to show that they can produce 106 new cells for every two progenitor cells, and that the cells they create have all the properties of fresh donor cells.
Participants that meet those goals will then have to show that they can produce 100 units per week for eight weeks, then enter a final development stage where they would have to build a production system capable of operating in a war zone and able to withstand extreme temperatures, humidity, dust and frequent transport.