PI William J. Federspiel

Title Anaerobically stored red blood cells with extended shelf-life

Description As part of the overall project, the University of Pittsburgh, McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine under the leadership of Dr. William Federspiel, will develop the conceptual design for the Oxygen Depletion Device (ODD) for NHSi’s Hemanext Anaerobic Storage Platform (HASP) red blood storage system.

The long-term objective of the overall project is to develop a novel blood storage system that will extend the shelf life of additive system red cell units, and at the same time, deliver red cells of higher efficacy and lower toxicity for transfusion therapy. In this system, red cells are stored in a modified additive solution under oxygen-depleted condition (anaerobic storage). The final product will have extended shelf life (9 weeks or more) as well as higher efficacy and lower toxicity compared to same-aged blood stored by conventional methods (more viable cells, higher oxygen delivery capacity immediately after transfusion and more deformable cells for better capillary perfusion).

The new storage system is design to be readily accommodated by the current blood banking operation without incurring major alteration in procedures or equipments. In the Phase I of this project, an experimental procedure was used to demonstrated that anaerobic storage yields; i) a significantly higher post-transfusion recovery compared to the conventional method after 6 weeks of storage; and ii) a comparable 9-week recovery compared to 6-week storage under conventional conditions.

The main aim of this Phase II study is to demonstrate that an experimental hardware/processes used in the Phase I can be reduced to practice by fabricating a blood collection/storage system that is self-contained and easily accommodated under current blood bank settings without compromises in its performances. Several prototype storage systems will be designed, fabricated and tested in vitro. Subsequently, an optimized prototype system will be tested in a clinical trial at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center with a goal of obtaining results comparable to ones attained under experimental procedure in the Phase I.

Source NIH STTR

Term 7/1/09 – 6/30/10

Amount: $139,583 (University Sub Contract; Prime to New Health Sciences)