Everyone is enjoying their summer run of HBO’s True Blood, yes? Our team of brooding vampires and charming Louisianans seem to be up to their usual high jinks. For those not into the show, it’s premised on the invention of TruBlood, a synthetic human blood substitute. A few years before the show begins, the Japanese have invented the stuff, and for the first time, vampires can subsist without killing people. They decide that now is the time to come out of the coffin—err, closet—and go mainstream.
But producing synthetic human blood has been a grail of sorts of the medical profession for decades. Imagine, no more public-service messages on the radio, begging for donations, no more blood donor trucks. If synthetic blood came into being, there would be no more searching for exact blood types, or fear of contracting blood-born diseases from transfusions. Heck, the entire blood-for-cookie market would collapse, and I mean that in the best way possible. And it may actually happen, possibly within the next few years.
Last year, scientists working for Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) published results in the journal Blood that showed they could produce functioning, oxygen-carrying red blood cells from stem cells. By selecting stem cells from embryos that produce O-negative blood (universal donor), ACT could theoretically produce synthetic blood that anyone could receive.
But they have a scaling problem. ACT managed to produce five billion red blood cells from a single stem cell. But a liter of adult blood contains between four and six trillion red blood cells. The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (ScotBlood), a kind of Red Cross for the UK, will try to pick up where ACT left off, developing technology that will allow for industrial-scale production of synthetic blood. Marc Turner, a Edinburgh University scientist and head of ScotBlood, hopes to have a proof of concept within a few years, but he told the BBC he thinks it could be 10 years before full production is a reality.
Of course, the one question really left outstanding is this: Once we have TruBlood, will we also find out that there have been vampires living among us? ‘Cause I’ve been watching the show, and I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.
July 6th, 2009 at 11:05 am
[...] news day, here’s an interesting little article from Discover about scientists’ real attempts to create synthetic blood. Of course, the one question really left outstanding is this: Once we have TruBlood, will we also [...]
July 6th, 2009 at 11:22 am
The vampires don’t seem to be too crazy about the stuff on the show. Still, once synthetic blood becomes available, proper flavouring should be simple enough. No need for preservatives either.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
On the show we don’t really have a sense of how it’s made. Maybe TruBlood is really synthetic, made from chemicals like hard candy or vitamins. It might be nourishing but gross. The way the Scots are trying to do it should be pretty similar to real blood. Maybe it would be more palatable?
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