Grant: Fellowship - Priority Announcement: Transfusion Science

Blood transfusion is a valuable tool in modern medicine and is very important to the health of surgery patients and cancer patients. In current blood banking procedures, blood typing ensures the safety of patients as mismatched blood transfusion can be very dangerous. There is no method currently available to produce universal donor blood cells so that blood can be given to anyone without typing. This is mainly due to the complex structure of RBC surface that contains over 300 minor antigens besides the major ABO and RhD antigens. Previous attempts including enzymatic treatment and polymer grafting yielded non-optimal results. Enzymatic treatment remains expensive and it can only remove or modify the carbohydrate-based antigens (A and B). Polymer grafting (PEG attachment to RBC surface) provides only a partial camouflage to many of the minor blood group antigens. To tackle these problems, in this project, we are developing a novel modification method for the creation of universal donor blood cells using a combination chemical and biological treatment of red blood cells. The development of such technology will be a fundamental advance and will tremendously improve our national blood supply and will open new avenues for the use of modified red blood cells in the treatment of certain diseases.