US-based blood and plasma company Velico has teamed up with the American Red Cross to understand how frontline clinicians can use its system for spray-drying plasma emergency blood transfusions.
The company has teamed up with the US non-profit as part of its Blood Center Education Program (BCEP), in which Red Cross doctors across the US will get hands-on training with FrontlineODP where the company will be looking for feedback on the unapproved device, which aims to enable safer and more stable blood transfusions in rural areas or following mass casualty events or in war zones.
The announcement comes after the company launched a Phase I safety study in July 2023 to demonstrate how its spray-dried plasma, an alternative to traditionally frozen plasma, could treat patients suffering from severe haemorrhaging before they arrived at the hospital.
Pampee Young, chief medical officer of biomedical services at the Red Cross, said: “The Red Cross has built a time-honoured legacy of leadership, innovation and an unwavering commitment to patients as reflected in its mission of ensuring that everyone in our country has access to safe, lifesaving blood and blood products.”
FrontlineODP was funded in part by US federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services, the US Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. This collaboration with the US Government comes alongside another partnership with the UK’s Ministry of Defence as part of its Blood Far Forward programme, which was created to better ensure that frontline military staff would be able to receive blood and plasma within 30 minutes of injury.
GlobalData’s Medical Device Intelligence Centre details how at present the FrontlineODP system is the only device in Velico’s pipeline. The company has said that its spray drying device allows for the decentralised production of dry plasma is vital for national emergency preparedness, including civilian, government and military collaboration for strategic stockpiles and readiness for mass casualty events.
Elsewhere in the blood transfusion space, German medical technology company, Lindis Blood Care, has announced that the last patient participating in its trial for the removal of tumour cells from surgical shed blood has completed its REMOVE Study.
