An Israeli company called RedC Biotech is seeking to eliminate blood shortages by developing universal red blood cells in a lab that can then be transferred to patients without the need for a donor.
Their lab-produced universal blood cells follow an amazing scientific process. First, the scientists create a “master cell bank” by using stem cells from a donor with universal O-negative blood. The stem cells are then developed into a very high concentration where they undergo a process through which stem cells turn into their target cells and finally multiplied.
RedC Founder and CEO Ari Gargir explained that this process is quite similar to the way that lab-grown animal protein is created.
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— Avi Kaner ابراهيم אבי (@AviKaner) June 12, 2022
“Cultivated meat companies take a stem cell from a cow and they turn it into the components of a steak- muscle, connective tissue, and fat, and compose the steak. We’re taking a human, universal donor stem cell and turning it into a red blood cell.”
“There’s estimated to be at least 100 million blood units that are in shortage around the world. But this large, problematic shortage does not influence all of the countries around the globe in the same way.”
Gargir became Intrigued with this issue back in 1990 when he was injured in a paragliding accident in the Golan Heights and needed a blood transfusion.
In order for a country to have a healthy supply of blood transfusions, around three percent of the population needs to donate on a regular basis. In the West, that is usually the case, yet other countries only have around one percent donating.
Israel’s RedC Biotech wins best startup at “Aviram Awards: Tech for Humanity” by developing process to mass-produce red blood cells from stem cells eliminating the need for blood donations and saving millions of lives.https://t.co/fwcmW7lEbR
— Ettie (@e_t_t_i_e) April 4, 2022
“Around the world, there are about 120 million blood transfusions that are donated every year,” Gargir says. “Most of them are in high-income regions. But the problem is mostly in low-income regions. Specifically, Sub-Saharan Africa where there’s a lot of sickle cell anemia, accidents, and problems with childbirth. Millions of people die every year because of insufficient and inadequate blood transfusions.”
RedC Biotech’s final goal also would like to reduce two essential components of blood transfusions that make it difficult to keep up with demand, cost, and storage.
Israeli startup RedC Biotech has a radical solution: generating an unlimited supply of universal red blood cells from a single donation of human stem cells.
— ISRAEL21c (@ISRAEL21C) April 26, 2022
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“Without being too poetic about it, it really means saving millions of people’s lives,” Gargir says. “And then we’ll have a real significance on medicine around the world.”
