Current Status of Artificial o2 Carriers

Perfluorocarbon‐Based Oxygen Carriers: Review of Products and Trials

“…However, Oxygent doses should be minimized because its particulate nature could easily overload the RES (12). Although this emulsion had showed significant oxygen delivery in animal models and human clinical trials, Phase III clinical trials of Oxygent were voluntarily suspended in 2001 because of an apparent imbalance in adverse neurologic outcome (80). However, these side effects were assigned to an inadequate clinical protocol that resulted in overly aggressive autologous blood harvesting in the treatment group prior to the CPB (81), and supposedly not directly related to the perflubron emulsion (80).…”

Injectable Oxygen: Interfacing Materials Chemistry with Resuscitative Science

“…This requires PFC emulsions to have 1) a high initial oxygen‐loading capacity, and 2) rapid oxygen release kinetics. If a PFC formulation has low oxygen carrying capacity or has high oxygen loading but takes too long for oxygen to diffuse to the tissue, then an undesirably higher dosage of PFC emulsions will need to be injected to meet the metabolic demand, which will increase safety risks such as intravascular obstruction, complement activation, thrombocytopenia, and stroke, among others . Notably, the dissolved oxygen concentration in PFCs increases linearly with the partial pressure of oxygen according to Henry's law.…”

“…If aP FC formulation has low oxygen carrying capacity or has high oxygen loading but takes too long for oxygen to diffuse to the tissue, then an undesirably higher dosage of PFC emulsions will need to be injected to meet the metabolic demand, which will increases afety risks such as intravascular obstruction, complement activation, thrombocytopenia, and stroke, among others. [35] Notably,t he dissolved oxygen concentration in PFCs increases linearly with the partial pressure of oxygen according to Henry'sl aw.T his is in stark contrastt oR BCs, which possess as igmoidal oxygen binding curve and favorable releasek inetics under normal physiological conditions (i.e., pO 2 < 120 mmHg) ( Figure 1C). I n other words, as ignificantly greater oxygen sink must be present to permit transfer of equal amountso fo xygen from PFC emulsions relative to natural blood.…”

The approach to the patient who refuses blood transfusion

“…A number of Hb‐based blood substitutes are currently in development, with some in phase III trials, but none have yet reached the market in the United States or Europe 29–31 . Some of the products have a history of successful use for Witnesses.…”