How soon will commercial-scale manufacture of Red Blood Cells be feasible?

[AussieNeil]

Interesting article on recent research into how to boost red blood cell production - possibly via new drugs or through commercial manufacture:

Hematology Times (free registration)

hematologytimes.com/p_artic...

'“This is allowing us to get close to the cost of normal donor-derived blood units,” he said. “If we can get the costs down to about $2000 per unit, that’s a reasonable cost.”

Previous research has shown it is possible to produce transfusion-grade RBCs, but the costs ranged from $8000 to $15,000 per unit of blood.'

Looks like we'll be relying on generous volunteers for blood donations to boost our red blood cells/haemoglobin for some time yet. Meanwhile, you can inform your blood volunteer friends that one unit of their red blood cells would currently cost at least $8,000 to manufacture!

Neil

Photo: Sulla, a red flowering legume with similar nutritional stock fodder value to alfalfa/lucerne. Last year I found sulla plants growing on the roadside in fill used to build up the road level. No one could identify the plant until some clever research by Natural Resources Pest Management a few weeks ago. The source was confirmed to be from a quarry 20km away, which adjoined a property where a farmer was growing sulla for fodder.