An Evanston company that makes a synthetic blood substitute intended to aid critically injured people, including soldiers, has been awarded $3.5 million in federal military funding to conduct clinical trials.
The award to Northfield Laboratories Inc., maker of the blood substitute PolyHeme, was announced Tuesday by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
“It has great potential to save lives,” Durbin said during a tour of Northfield’s Mt. Prospect laboratory. “If we have another replacement blood supply that we could turn to in times of need, I think that it would be a godsend.”
The ongoing PolyHeme trials at 32 trauma centers across the country are the latest development in a highly competitive race to secure approval of a blood substitute. The liquid lifeline requires no blood-typing and, unlike saline used now to stabilize patients in ambulances, works like red blood cells by carrying oxygen.
About 720 trauma patients, including some at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood and the Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas, have received with the blood substitute with favorable results, said Dr. Steven Gould, chairman and chief executive of Northfield.
The company annually produces about 10,000 units, about a pint each, and is in the critical final testing phase. Once testing is complete, the Food and Drug Administration, which approved the clinical trials, must approve the product.
During the last two decades, many companies have worked to develop oxygen-carrying blood substitutes but have failed to obtain FDA approval.
Unlike regular blood supplies, which have a shelf life of about 42 days, PolyHeme has a shelf life of more than 12 months, Gould said. PolyHeme is processed from expired blood donations.
Durbin, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, helped secure $1.4 million for the company in the defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005.
Funding for fiscal year 2006, which was passed last month, included the $3.5 million for Northfield.
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