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Program Manager: Dr.
Jon Mogford
The Blood Pharming Program is developing
novel technologies to enable in vitro
production of red blood cells (RBCs)
that are untainted, readily available,
and free of storage lesions. The ultimate
target of the program is the development
of an automated, fieldable cell culture
and packaging system capable of producing
transfusable amounts of universal donor
RBCs using human progenitor cells as
starting material.
It is imperative that RBCs produced
by the progenitor-based system be functionally
equivalent to fresh donor cells especially
with regard to O2-carrying capacity and
morphology. The automated cell culture
system must be capable of maintaining
a self-renewing progenitor population,
providing a milieu for efficient differentiation
along the erythroid pathway, sorting/purifying
end-product RBCs, and packaging “ready
for transfusion” RBCs.
Technical areas addressed by the program
include progenitor cell biology and erythroid
differentiation, RBC physiology, cellular
support matrices/scaffolds, automated
cell culture systems, and cell sorting,
purification and packaging.
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