Bio‐inspired nanomedicine strategies for artificial blood components

Abstract

Blood is a fluid connective tissue where living cells are suspended in non-cellular liquid matrix. The cellular components of blood render gas exchange (RBCs), immune surveillance (WBCs) and hemostatic responses (platelets), and the non-cellular components (salts, proteins etc.) provide nutrition to various tissues in the body. Dysfunction and deficiencies in these blood components can lead to significant tissue morbidity and mortality. Consequently, transfusion of whole blood or its components is a clinical mainstay in the management of trauma, surgery, myelosuppression and congenital blood disorders. However, donor-derived blood products suffer from issues of shortage in supply, need for type matching, high risks of pathogenic contamination, limited portability and shelf-life, and a variety of side-effects. While robust research is being directed to resolve these issues, a parallel clinical interest has developed towards bioengineering of synthetic blood substitutes that can provide blood’s functions while circumventing the above problems. Nanotechnology has provided exciting approaches to achieve this, using materials engineering strategies to create synthetic and semi-synthetic RBC substitutes for enabling oxygen transport, platelet substitutes for enabling hemostasis and WBC substitutes for enabling cell-specific immune response. Some of these approaches have further extended the application of blood cell-inspired synthetic and semi-synthetic constructs for targeted drug delivery and nanomedicine. The current article will provide a comprehensive review of the various nanotechnology approaches to design synthetic blood cells, along with a critical discussion of successes and challenges of the current state-of-art in this field.

Manipulating hemoglobin oxygenation using silica nanoparticles: a novel prospect for artificial oxygen carriers

“…[3][4][5] Recently, nanoparticles have attracted much attention as new scaffolds for hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs). [6][7][8][9][10] Indeed, the development of bionanotechnology paves the way for the rational design of blood substitutes, providing that the interaction between the nanoparticles and hemoglobin at a molecular scale and its effect on the oxygenation properties of hemoglobin are finely controlled.…”

“…Our results show that SNPs can act as an effector for human adult hemoglobin (HbA) and sickle cell hemoglobin (HbS) and allow manipulation of their oxygenation properties while maintaining their tetrameric structure in physiological conditions. The in vivo studies reported for nanoparticle-based systems 5,6,10 suggest these new HBOCs may become a suitable blood substitute in the future.…”

Rational design of block copolymer self-assemblies in photodynamic therapy

“…The resultant carrier loaded with zinc phthalocyanine (ZnPc) was able to generate more singlet oxygen than the one without haemoglobin. Perfluorocarbon (PFC) is recognized for its biocompatibility, its ability to dissolve significant amounts of oxygen and to increase singlet oxygen lifetime [124]. A proposed solution is to stabilize a perfluorinated solvent by an hydrophilic shell, using lipids [125], albumin [62] or hyaluronic acid conjugated with chlorin-e6 conjugated [112].…”

Trauma‐targeted delivery of tranexamic acid improves hemostasis and survival in rat liver hemorrhage model

“…Robust research efforts are being directed at improving survival in trauma, by making whole blood, blood components, and blood surrogates more portable, storage-stable, and accessible 8,58,59. Along with such strategic improvements in blood products, significant efforts are directed for augmenting hemostasis by administering recombinant coagulation factors, tourniquets, hemostatic dressings, and pharmaceutical agents 60.…”