Blood Pharming

Mounting strain on the worldwide supply of donor blood has resulted in an emerging interest in alternative sources for transfusible blood. Tighter regulation of collection and storage have reduced donation to 65 Million units of whole blood annually (from 80 Million in previous periods). In addition, the shelf life of banked blood is limited; degradation in quality known as "storage lesion" becomes apparent after two weeks, and blood cannot be transfused after 42 days. These constraints on blood supply are beginning to impact quality of medical care in US, delaying 7% of elective surgeries. Supply shortfalls are substantially worse in developing nations, which collect less than 40% of total donations despite accounting for 82% of world population. Safety of donor blood supplies is questionable in these nations, which do not routinely screen for HIV, HBV, HCV or syphilis in all cases.

Arteriocyte's Blood Pharming program is currently working to combine multiple state of the art technologies to produce fresh units of universal-donor (Type O, RH factor negative) packed red blood cells. The company's proprietary NANEX technology permits 250-fold expansion of hematopoietic stem cells that are subsequently cultured in a unique environment of nutrients and growth factor to induce differentiation into enucleated red blood cells. The resulting cell product is functionally indistinguishable from red blood cells in healthy circulation. Arteriocyte has demonstrated feasibility of this technology, and is currently implementing automated systems for rapid, high yield production.