While all of modern medicine and science cannot come close to recreating blood completely with all its functionality, a Romanian scientist has taken a new approach to creating a sterile blood that seems to at least carry oxygen safely through the body so it can be used in emergency situations. Ironically, out of Dracula's legendary birthplace comes a potentially effective attempt at creating artificial human blood. While all of modern medicine and science cannot come close to recreating blood completely with all its functionality, a scientist working in Transylvania has taken a new approach. The sterile blood he's created seems to at least carry oxygen safely through the body so it can be used in emergency situations. The quest to create such a product has been going on for decades. In the 1990s, Baxter Healthcare Corporation conducted clinical trials, but people were dying at very high rates. In the mid-2000s, the FDA approved a "no-consent study" so researchers could carry out emergency transfusions on unconscious trauma victims with another artificial blood prototype. Both of these used hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers, which can have disastrous side effects like high blood pressure and organ damage. But Professor Radu Silaghi-Dumitrescu proposes a mixture of salt, albumin, and hemerythrin, a stress-resistant protein found in sea worms. He says it can be combined with water to create "instant blood." They have transfused the substance into mice without any signs of toxicity or other negative effects.

• published: 07 Nov 2013
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