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The development of a field-deployable, shelf-stable whole blood equivalent is officially under the microscope in a new DARPA research project.
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The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced a Fieldable Solutions for Hemorrhage with bio-Artificial Resuscitation Products (FSHARP) program designed to meet demand for a whole blood equivalent when donated blood products are not available.
The program will seek to integrate multiple bio-artificial and synthetic components to deliver oxygen, stop bleeding, and replace volume. These are the major components which can then be used to resuscitate trauma patients.
The research will also focus on efficacy and safety in realistic trauma models, stabilisation of the product for months without cold storage and scalable manufacturing methods.
DARPA program manager for FSHARP and a US Navy medical officer, Commander Jean-Paul Chretien said to improve chances for survival against blood loss, patients should have access to blood within 30 minutes or less, and rapid patient evacuation to a facility that has blood is not always an option.
“When blood donations decline, as we have seen during the COVID pandemic, that threatens availability everywhere, even in high resource settings,” Commander Chretien said.
“Blood availability also could be at risk in military engagements with large numbers of casualties, with a sudden and significant increase in need.
“The primary problem FSHARP aims to solve is whole blood’s dependence on cold chain and resupply.”
A team from University of Maryland, Baltimore will lead the program with support from Case Western Reserve University, Charles River Laboratories, Haima Therapeutics, KaloCyte Inc, Latham Biopharm Group, Ohio State University, Pumas-AI Inc, Southwest Research Institute, Teleflex Incorporated, University of California San Diego, and University of Pittsburgh.
“This is truly a ‘DARPA Hard’ problem and an example of DARPA’s ability to facilitate the partnerships needed to achieve technological breakthroughs," Commander Chretien said.
“To address FSHARP’s goals requires multiple universities and companies developing analogues of various blood components, simultaneous evaluation of multiple efficacy and safety features and interactions among components in various model systems, industrial-scale manufacturing capabilities that can adapt the lab-scale methods, and analytics to integrate large volumes of experimental data and guide further optimisation.
“UMB (University of Maryland) has assembled a consortium with the broad set of capabilities needed to accomplish these tasks.”
