Bleeding Out
Blood stocks continue to fall, quietly generating the next big opportunity for pharma - in trauma, battlefield and childbirth - how Synthetic Blood will soon become liquid gold
Since I turned 18, four times a year I find myself sat in a local town hall or church. A few questions before a needle is stuck into my arm, and 1 pint of fresh blood is drawn. Usually within a day or two, I receive a text telling me where my donated blood has ended up.
The blood stocks are critical - for trauma patients after freak accidents; for mothers who lose blood during childbirth; as well as other routine operations within the normal clinical environment.
The most alarming thing about all of this however, is that whenever I go and donate, I’m consistently one of the youngest donors they see during the day, and I’m 33. Most donors are now over 55.
Put it down to a cultural shift in values, pure fear of the needles, or even complete laziness - but it seems that the millennials and Gen Z do not appear to be willing to donate. Bizarrely, this isn’t exclusively a European, UK or American issue - appearing to be a global trend. Actual statistics are sparse, but no nation seems to claim that they’ve got an abundant supply.
For certain blood types, the problem is bigger than it seems. Blood types generally need to match in the donor and the recipient. The only ‘universal’ type (ie which can be used in any receipient’s body, irrespective of blood type) is O-. Only around 14% of the world’s population is O-. Much of these stocks are reserved for trauma patients, where time is of the essence, and often information on the recipient’s blood type is rarely immediately available in an emergency situation. AB- and AB+ type patients only represent 1-2% of the whole population, so finding an exact match in that circumstance is even harder.
There’s a good chance that at some point, nearly all of us will know someone close to us who requires a pint of the red stuff for one thing or another. And if the only donors are quickly approaching the age of maturity where they’ll have to stop, we’re going to be stuck with very little stocks left. And what’s more, is that those stocks will also have quite a limited shelf life too.
So I think this is going to be a rapidly increasing issue - and why I think the company that conquers the manufacturing of a synthetic blood could be the winners going forward.
I actually see the bets that pharmaceutical companies make in the next few years as critical; and AI use for assessing compounds is accelerating development. These are businesses that are not afraid of sacrificing for a bet - a case in point is how the increased marketing of semaglutide for weight loss is nearly certainly going to cannibalise part of their own market for diabetes management medications.
However, this isn’t one of those situations. We’ve all got about 8 pints of blood sloshing around inside us, and we’ll always need that as long as we’re living and breathing. If we don’t have sufficient natural stock to satisfy the need - then we’ve got to find some from elsewhere.
Scientists have been attempting this for years, with little success until recently. The main purpose of our blood is to carry oxygen around us to our cells. So the first promising iterations have been dubbed AOCs (Artificial Oxygen Carriers).
It’s not quite as simple as that though - the synthetic blood must also be non-immunogenic, so that the body’s immune system doesn’t try to attack it once it’s administered. And then, it needs to be able to exist in the body until the patient’s bone marrow can replenish it’s own red blood cells that have been lost.
After a slightly rocky start int he early 2000s, the latest generation of ‘hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers’ (HBOCs) are looking very promising. Kayocyte, founded in 2016 have developed ErythroMer - a synthetic blood, which can carry 2-3 times the amount of stored oxygen as a good quality unit of human blood. What’s more is that it comes in a powdered form, which is reconstituted with water. All of a sudden, that gives it a shelf life of up to 1 year of stable storage, and can easily be shipped to frontline medical units on battlefields and carried in ambulances when required also.
It’s not perfect though - with a half-life of 18-20 hours, it’s not designed for long term care - and trauma victims may need either multiple administrations, or a mixture of human blood and ErythroMer. It’s a great solution for trauma, some anaemic conditions, and also for Jehovah’s Witnesses (who traditionally often deny blood transfusions on religious grounds).
This is a development which needs more attention, and needs the support of big pharma to increase the testing and manufacturing of it. I’m predicting a rapid increase in demand over the coming years, and I think the demand will seemingly appear out of nowhere within the next 5-10 years.
But until then - if you can donate, then please do - it’s the easiest way to save a life you can do. Plus, they give out free biscuits after.
TH
Research gathered from and excellent article by:
Sederstrom, J. (2025) Banking on Artificial Blood, ASH Clinical News [Online]