When red blood cells are poured into the test tubes here in Dr. Allan Doctor’s lab, tiny tools measure the reaction of the rabbit aortas strung up inside, computing if and how strongly the aortas constrict. Doctor and his team are trying to make sure that when they dump in the artificial blood they’re developing, the aortas react the same way.
The experiments being conducted on a recent day were not only just a few of the many the team will need to run before testing their blood substitute in people, but were also early steps to show that their design, with any luck, can steer them beyond the decades of failure in the field.
There has been “about 50, 60 years of research in trying to make a blood substitute that has not worked,†said Doctor, a pediatric critical care physician and researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.