Paul Segall repeats a mad scientist's mantra while holding an albino rat in his gloved right hand. "This stuff is not baloney. It's for real!" he declares. And indeed, the rat is remarkably feisty for a patient who just had 78 percent of his natural blood supply replaced by an artificial blood substitute.
As president of BioTime Inc., a 10-person biotech company in Berkeley, California, Segall hopes to make a killing in the blood business. BioTime is ramping up to begin production of Hextend, a completely artificial, physiologically balanced plasma solution. Hextend lacks hemoglobin the blood's oxygen carrier so it isn't true fake blood, but BioTime claims that its plasma solution can safely replace 50 percent of a body's blood on demand.
Hextend works by keeping acid-base balance and electrolyte levels close to normal and by making a supply of glucose available to energy-starved cells. This, in turn, prevents blood vessels from shutting down and inhibits the onset of post-traumatic shock. But the real beauty of Hextend lies in its simplicity: researchers combine water, starch, sugar, salts, and buffers in proprietary specificity and amounts, then steam the mixture under pressure to sterilize it.
Blood substitutes are more than just a mad scientist's folly they're big business, a US$5 billion-a-year industry worldwide. Currently, blood plasma is harvested from humans, so the supply is limited to the number of available donors. As a result, a liter of plasma can cost upward of $300. Segall believes he can market Hextend at a price between $100 and $200 per liter.
"There are several companies approaching the blood-substitute industry from different angles," says Amy Bell, junior equity analyst with investment banking firm H. J. Meyers & Co. Inc. "But BioTime has an advantage because all of the company's components are already recognized as safe. Ultimately, Hextend could be used not only in normal-temperature blood replacement but also during cryosurgery and organ harvesting."
Of course, before BioTime can begin peddling fake blood, the FDA must grant its approval to begin clinical tests with human subjects. With luck, that will happen early this year, making Hextend available for use by doctors in two to three years. That would be great news for a small company with lots of potential in a bloodthirsty market.
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Gatorade for Vampires
