New technology to upscale production of potentially lifesaving, lab-grown blood is being developed through a SMART CRC collaboration.
While most blood transfusions rely on people rolling up their sleeve to donate, there are a few special niches where lab grown blood could be a life-saving alternative in future.
Bringing together Australian Red Cross Lifeblood and The University of Queensland (UQ), the project will develop new manufacturing technologies to create lab-grown red blood cells that could benefit patients with rare blood types, newborn babies, and those requiring frequent and closely matched transfusions.
Lifeblood researchers are amongst only a few research groups in the world who are already growing fully functional red blood cells from donor stem cells in the lab but producing them in quantities large enough for use in patients is inefficient and expensive.
SMART CRC CEO Professor Simon Cool said this $2.5 million collaboration will help build the manufacturing capabilities for these niche blood products, as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.
“The SMART CRC exists to accelerate the translation of therapies and technologies to create meaningful benefits to Australian patients,” he said.
“By bringing Lifeblood and UQ together with the SMART CRC, we are excited to support the development of technology that could help meet the needs of patients with rare blood types who may struggle to find a compatible donor match.”
Lifeblood researcher Dr Becky Griffiths said matching patients with rare blood types to compatible donated blood is a complex challenge for blood services globally.
“Some people have extremely rare blood types and there might only be a few donors in the whole country with that blood type,” she said.
“While we can grow blood in the lab, it currently takes three weeks to produce just a few teaspoons. That shows the scale of the challenge in increasing production to the point where we could grow a full bag of blood.
“For people with rare blood types where there’s very few other donors, if we can grow blood for them, that would be really exciting. There may also be other uses including newborn babies, patients in remote areas, and those with complex transfusion needs.
“For now, while this research progresses, it is critical that we recruit more donors of different ethnic heritages to donate, with less than 3 per cent of the population donating blood.”
UQ biomedical engineer Dr Mark Allenby said the current process for manufacturing lab-grown red blood cells relies on expensive reagents and complicated manual techniques.
“Through this project we are reengineering the manufacturing process using advanced bioreactor and cell-processing technologies to create a new production system that aims to produce higher yields of quality red blood cells for less cost,” he said.
“By improving how cells are grown, separated and scaled up, we aim to make lab grown blood more accessible to patients who need it the most. The manufacturing processes developed through this work could also support the production of other emerging cell therapies like stem cell and immune-based treatments,” he said.
“We can dream up incredible new therapies and treatments, but if manufacturing is inefficient and costly, they are out of reach for most people. By engineering smarter and more efficient manufacturing processes, we can help bring costs down and make these treatments more accessible to patients who need them.”
Any use of lab grown blood in future would first need rigorous clinical trials, and regulatory approval.