UC Davis finds market for freeze-dried blood platelets

UC Davis finds market for freeze-dried blood platelets
Celia Lamb
February 9, 2004
Sacramento Business Journal
Researchers at the University of California Davis have developed a technology for freeze-drying platelets -- one of the components of blood -- that could save the lives of cancer patients while creating new ways to heal wounds and perform tests.
Platelets are disk-shaped cells that clump to form blood clots. Blood banks normally discard unused platelets after five days because they can become infected with bacteria.
John Crowe and Fern Tablin, the university professors who developed the technology, say their method extends the shelf-life of platelets to at least three months. It offers the hope of reducing waste and creating a bigger supply of platelets.
"Wouldn't that be wonderful if that happened?" said Leslie Botos, spokeswoman for BloodSource, a blood center network in Sacramento that serves 40 hospitals in Northern California. "It's probably one of the biggest challenges we have. The demand for platelets is incredible."
A Rockville, Md., startup called Adlyfe Inc. is negotiating to license the technology from the university. Alan Rudolph, Adlyfe's chief technology officer, has been involved in the technology's development since the early 1980s, when he was a graduate student in Crowe's lab.
Within a year Adlyfe hopes to market its first platelet product, a compound for calibrating instruments that monitor platelet function in patients, Rudolph said. Down the road the company wants to sell freeze-dried platelets for transfusions and make wound-healing gels or bandages.
Ten years of research: In high school Crowe developed a fascination with organisms such as yeast that can survive dehydration, and he made "biostabilization" his life's work. His early studies of such organisms found they usually synthesize large quantities of a sugar called trehalose that preserves the structure of biological molecules.
Crowe and his collaborators published research showing how the sugar works to preserve proteins and cell membranes during dehydration.
"We didn't realize this was going to have so many applications," Crowe said. "Just look through the pharmaceutical industry everywhere and you'll see it being used."
One example: liposomes, tiny containers made of the same compounds as cell membranes. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies use liposomes to encapsulate drugs and sell them freeze-dried.
About 10 years ago Crowe received a call from Rudolph, then working in research and development at the U.S. Navy. The Navy wanted him to figure out how to use trehalose for freeze-drying platelets.
"I laughed and said, 'I don't know the first thing about platelets,' " Crowe said. "But then they offered a bunch of money."
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