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DARPA has artificial blood; Cullen family stock upgraded to 'buy'
A few years ago, DARPA teamed up with a company called Arteriocyte to research methods for manufacturing blood without an actual donor on-hand, and whaddya know -- a million and change tax dollars later, here we are. You no doubt remember stem cells. Well, they're back in a major way (did they really ever leave?), and this time instead of clogging up the Supreme Court's backlog they're helping manufacture blood that is "functionally indistinguishable" from the real type-O. "Pharmed" blood (their word, not ours) will eventually be a godsend for troops in the field, where fresh blood often takes three weeks to arrive from the source. But don't cancel all your donor appointments just yet -- eBlood (our word, not theirs) won't be ready for human testing until 2013. And pints still cost more than a bottle of Johnny Walker's finest -- around $5,000, and that's before they factor in the cookies and apple juice they gave the umbilical cord for its time and patience.
DARPA teams up with Arteriocyte to create ominous-sounding blood pharming machine for the military
DARPA's been running a blood pharming program for quite awhile now, but it's gotten a real kick start this week with the announcement of a partnership with Cleveland-based biotech company Arteriocyte. Arteriocyte, it seems, has developed a Nanofiber Based System, or NANEX, a technology that enables the production of red blood cells without a donor. The two companies hope research will eventually lead to an "in theatre" blood-making machine for the military. So, if there's no donor, where do the progenitor cells come from? Well, that's a little hazy at this point, though Arteriocyte developed the NANEX using "blood of the umbilical cord" (stem cells), but we don't know what will fuel the final product. Personally, we hope they can squeak out a way to do it using the less controversial "blood of the dragon."[Via CNet]
