Dr. Dana Devine, a research scientist with Canadian Blood Services, says her team of 17 staff scientists are working to expand the science of blood and blood transfusions. An example would be accelerating the rate of stem cell renewal in patients undergoing cancer treatment.
THE SCIENCE OF BLOOD
Platelets are powerful life-savers – small blood cells used in large quantities to treat people with prolonged bleeding, including some cancer patients and those with hemophilia.
But the power of platelets is fleeting. They can be stored for only five days, and the need to constantly renew the supply is a challenge for Canada’s blood system.
Researchers with Canadian Blood Services are on a quest to solve the mystery of why platelets age so quickly, with the ultimate goal of extending their “shelf life.”
“Once we understand, at the cell-biology level, why and how they age, we can take steps to slow down the process,” says Dana Devine, vice president, Medical, Scientific & Research Affairs, at Canadian Blood Services. “If we can determine how to keep platelets for a longer period of time, maintaining their quality, it would have a big impact on our ability to manage the inventory.”
This is just one of the many research and development projects occupying the 17 staff scientists who are working at Canadian Blood Services to expand the frontiers of the science of blood and blood transfusions.
Ensuring an adequate supply of blood and blood products to meet the needs of patients isn’t just a matter of recruiting donors and processing blood. R&D is a vital part of the mandate of the national blood agency.
Improving the quality of blood products made from whole blood donations is an important investigative area, says Dr. Devine. In addition to the research into the aging of platelets, scientists are developing a new method to assess the platelets’ quality, based on their shape. This is a tool that could someday be used in hospitals, she says, “to determine whether the platelets they have in their blood bank are of optimal quality to be given to patients.”
Other research is focused on using the latest scientific knowledge about blood properties, to develop new tests for measuring the quality of all blood products.
Another key research focus is “to make sure that we have blood products that work for all Canadians,” Dr. Devine says. “This is really addressing the issue that sometimes you have patients whose blood is difficult to match. We have to give blood that’s compatible with that patient’s blood group.”
Greg Denomme, a Toronto-based Canadian Blood Services scientist, is working on a major project designed to address the challenge of matching blood for patients who are constantly receiving transfusions. An example would be those with blood disorders such as thalassemia and sickle cell anemia.
“Patients who are chronically transfused develop antibodies to various antigens, which are small structures on red cells,” explains Dr. Denomme. “The major antigens are A, B, O and RH, which most people know about. But there are many minor antigens, too. “When people develop an immune response to one or more of these minor antigens, because of frequent transfusions, they need to have an increasingly specific blood match. The blood they need can’t contain any of those antigens or they’ll reject the blood and have a bad reaction.”
Dr. Denomme and his colleagues are using sophisticated DNA testing to build up a database of 10,000 donors in Toronto, who are genotyped for up to 18 antigens. This will reduce the need to conduct expensive tests on a large number of potential donors. “Now we will know more about which donors have rare antigens and rare combinations, so that we can more quickly and effectively match donors to patients who are chronically transfused and need matched blood.”
Another project that addresses the challenges of matching blood types is known as “stealth red cell technology.” This involves coating red blood cells with a permeable coating that masks the cells’ antigens, to prevent the patient’s immune system from rejecting the transfusion.
Canadian Blood Services’ scientists are also working on developing a replacement for a blood product called intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), made from plasma. Canada currently can’t meet its own demand for IVIG, and needs to buy it from other countries.
Even more advanced research is being done in the area of stem cells.
In one project, scientists are working to accelerate the rate of stem cell renewal in patients who have chemotherapy. This would allow them to rebuild their platelets more quickly.
“We’re working to develop a new generation of products here in Canada, as well as assessing the potential benefit of the newest technologies from around the world,” says Dr. Devine. “We’re constantly pushing the science so we can make the blood system as modernized and state-of-theart as we can get.”
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