Emerging Capital for Blood Medicines

Oct 16th, 2007 | By Penny Sleuth Contributor | Category: Technology

The Associated Press reports that paramedics are using a new compound as a blood substitute when time is of the essence for a transfusion, and blood isn’t available or time is of the essence. This is being done at 20 hospitals.

The product is called PolyHeme, and is manufactured by Northfield Laboratories. Dr. Ernest Moore, chief of trauma surgery at Denver Health Medical Center, said, “It could revolutionize how we take care of resuscitation in the United States and across the world.”

Giving the wrong blood type to someone can kill them, and there is often insufficient time to either do the testing or get the right blood.

At Loyola University, PolyHeme actually temporarily replaced ALL of a patient’s blood, which can be necessary in cases of severe trauma where massive bleeding has occurred.

In today’s ambulances, patients receive a saline solution (saltwater). This has some of the effects of blood, but is a very poor substitute. In particular, it can’t transport oxygen.

PolyHeme lasts longer than blood, solving a storage problem the makes carrying blood in ambulances impractical. It works with patients of any blood type, thereby making it akin to a superior “type O” blood source.

An interesting wrinkle is that the typical patient can’t give consent, so a special exemption to consent rules is allowed. (The presumption is that most patients would prefer to live, though some, such as Christian Scientists, might prefer to risk death.)

Where will this go?

Assuming it passes all the safety tests, I foresee PolyHeme becoming a standard tool not just in ambulances, but also in hospitals and even doctors’ offices. It will find application in battlefield conditions and in the Third World where storage of conventional blood supplies is difficult at best.

But PolyHeme is not the ultimate solution. At a conference on nanotechnology I recently attended, participants described a future nanotechnology device called a “respirocyte.” Essentially, a respirocyte is a tiny artificial red blood cell, at a fraction the size of the living equivalent and far more efficient.

Respirocytes would enable a person to survive oxygen deprivation for hours. Imagine the benefits for swimming, and especially diving. People being placed in dangerous situations, such as racecar drivers, could take an injection of respirocytes before hand to assure that their bodies would have ample resources to survive whatever might happen.

Respirocytes would result in virtually every athletic record being broken. It’s another example of the line between human and machine being blurred. It’s a fact, albeit an unsettling one, and is moving steadily closer. (I will explore the implications of this in my forthcoming book.)

Northfield Laboratories is not a suitable investment for us. However, I expect the first respirocyte-oriented startups to begin appearing in the next several years. I’ll be watching for them.

To your profitable future,
Jonathan Kolber
October 16, 2007

P.S.: My Emerging Capital Report readers are the first to find out about these kinds of breakthroughs. They recently became aware of another medical development that could cure one of the world’s most dreaded diseases.

Penny Sleuth Contributor

The Penny Sleuth also features commentary by other financial analysts, small-cap experts, investment gurus and an array of contributors from various fields and occupations. Their diverse insights and contrarian investing ideas are hand selected by the Penny Sleuth editors.

Special Report: HOW YOU COULD TURN $200 INTO $1.2 MILLION!