Washington University researcher moves closer to perfecting artificial blood

St. Louis Business Journal
By Brian Robbins

June 25, 2018, 6:51 am

A universal blood substitute has been one of the most elusive breakthroughs for medical researchers over the past 70 years, with companies attempting to create synthetic blood that can be easily stored, distributed and administered.

Implications for the artificial blood could be monumental, from the U.S. Military equipping their medics to aid fellow soldiers, to emergency medical personnel giving blood transplants to patients in ambulances. It has the potential to save millions of lives.

This is what the company KaloCyte’s invention, ErythroMer, aims to do.

ErythroMer is a universal, freeze-dried blood substitute that can be reactivated with water and be administered to treat traumatic hemorrhages when blood supplies are limited.

According to KaloCyte’s founder, Dr. Allan Doctor, ErythroMer could have major implications in the world of health care.

“It’s instant blood,” Doctor said. “It will change what’s in the emergency room, it’s going to change outcomes for trauma, it will change how soldiers are resuscitated.”

The way ErythroMer works is similar to how modern ice packs activate, and there wouldn’t have to be crossmatching for blood types, Doctor said.

“It’s a dry powder and you just add water,” he said. “A medic could be carrying it around in his backpack, it could just be on a shelf in an ambulance. Basically, you envision a bag where there’s a dry side and a wet side, and just like those hot packs or cold packs you break it, shake it and inject it. That’s how you would have a transfusion.”

According to Doctor, ErythroMer isn’t looking to replace the real thing but act as a substitute until the patient could gain access to the real thing at a hospital.

If it goes to market, ErythroMer would cost around $1,400 per bag.

Doctor said the price is comparable to the fully-loaded cost hospitals are currently paying to buy and store a regular unit of blood.

KaloCyte’s research was made possible by BioGenerator, the investment arm of BioSTL, whose goal is to stimulate St. Louis’ life sciences industry.

In order to get his research moving forward, Doctor went through BioGenerators’ Fundamentals program, received assistance writing competitive grant applications through its Grants2Business initiative, and KaloCyte uses their free BioGenerator Labs located at 4320 Forest Park Ave., in the Cortex district, for its research.

Harry Arader, director at BioGenerator, said that the Fundamentals program coaches researchers like Doctor to be effective company founders, and that no other program teaches that skill set.

“We try to teach just enough about business so that researchers like Allan can be an effective communicator of their vision,” Arader said. “We teach them to be able to communicate it in enough of a business-like language, that business people would be motivated to get involved.”

During his time in the Fundamentals program, Arader said that Doctor was responsive to all the potential hurdles and challenges. He said BioGenerator kept giving Doctor various goals and that he would continually “crush it.”

In addition to his work at KaloCyte, Doctor is a pediatric critical care physician and researcher at Washington University.

Doctor credits the university for their willingness to allow their faculty to participate in entrepreneurship such as KaloCyte.

But even with the breakthrough research KaloCyte has made, the artificial blood may still have a while before it hits hospitals and battlefields around the world.

Numerous FDA trials still need to be conducted, with multiple phases to make sure the artificial substitute is safe for the market.

Already, Doctor’s artificial blood has been tested on smaller mammals like mice, but the next phase will require a bigger test subject, such as a rabbit.

If ErythroMer makes it through the long FDA approval process, its estimated market value is around $15 billion to $18 billion in annual sales in the U.S. alone, according to Doctor.

In fact, there has already been substantial support for the product.

The company is supported by a $2 million Fast Track Phase I/II STTR grant from the National Heart Blood and Lung Institute and a $3 million grant through the Congressionally-directed Medical Research Program from the United States Department of Defense.

In addition to grants, KaloCyte received a $800,000 investment in May, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

Doctor also added that he recently received a phone call from NASA indicating they would be interested in the final version of ErythroMer for a potential mission to Mars, whenever that may be.

When asked how ErythroMer might impact the medical world, Doctor was apprehensive about whether or not his research could be the next medical holy grail but was proud of the fact that KaloCyte’s work could go toward saving lives.

“We’re standing on shoulders and maybe getting over the wall, or maybe we don’t really know how high the wall is,” he said. “Maybe we will get over, and maybe someone will have to stand on our shoulders. At a minimum we’ve moved the field closer to this goal, and that’s very satisfying.”

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