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Funding Will Be Used to Develop Shelf-Stable Product for Trauma Patients to Potentially Save Lives
BALTIMORE, Feb. 4, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — A University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) physician-scientist will head a new federally-funded research program to develop and test a whole blood product, storable at room temperature, that can be used to transfuse wounded soldiers in the field within 30 minutes of injury, potentially saving thousands of lives. UMSOM will manage the $46.4 million four-year research project administered by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in collaboration with the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP) and more than a dozen universities and biotech companies.
“We have assembled an outstanding team to develop a bio-synthetic whole-blood product that can be freeze-dried for easy portability, storage, and reconstitution,” said study principal investigator Allan Doctor, MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Center for Blood Oxygen Transport and Hemostasis (CBOTH) at UMSOM. “It will be designed for easy use in the field by medics at the point of injury, and will perform like a traditional blood transfusion to, for example, stabilize a patient’s blood pressure or facilitate blood clotting.”
To achieve this goal, the program will employ sophisticated artificial intelligence, state-of-the-art experimental platforms, and multiple complimentary animal models. The product will be tested for efficacy and safety in trauma victims who have complex multiple injuries including shock and traumatic brain injury.
Bleeding is the most common cause of potentially survivable death in trauma, in both military and civilian settings. Whole blood transfusions remain the gold standard but present logistical challenges such as the dependence on available donors, requirement for cold storage, and limited viability of about 40 days. Rapid evacuation of patients who are rapidly bleeding out due to a gunshot wound or other…
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