A RUNCORN science company has won a grant to help fund a £100,000 pioneering research project to develop artificial blood.

SpheriTech says its s SpheriTech’s synthetic blood, SpheriSome® Hb, could revolutionise the treatment of trauma patients,

The leading life science company on The Heath Business and Technical Park has received a grant from innovation agency Innovate UK.

Dr Don Wellings, the founder and managing director of SpheriTech, said: “The use of donated blood in transfusion therapy, while effective in restoring an adequate supply of oxygen in the body of the recipient, has several limitations.

“Although testing procedures exist to detect the presence of certain diseases in blood, these procedures cannot eliminate completely the risk of blood-borne disease.”

Transfused blood can be used only in recipients having a blood type compatible with that of the donor.

Dr Wellings said: “Delays in treatment, resulting from the necessity of blood typing prior to transfusion, together with the limited shelf life of blood and the limited availability of certain blood types, impose constraints on the immediate availability of compatible blood for transfusion in an emergency setting.

“ Yet, despite numerous attempts to come up with viable synthetic blood substitutes since the 1980s, there is still not a single synthetic blood substitute currently available for human trauma patients in the US and Europe.”

SpheriTech has now invented and is developing a novel blood substitute, a Haemoglobin-based oxygen carrier (HBOC), which will be intravenously administered to deliver oxygen to the body’s tissues.

Dr Wellings says SpheriSome® Hb also has the ability to be fully excreted from the body and not accumulate in various tissues, and is non-toxic, non-immunogenic, non-antigenic and non-carcinogenic.