Research target and progress in hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: As a kind of blood substitutes, hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers have been studied for more than 40 years. The research efforts to achieve this goal have so far gone through three different generations of hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers. While the first and second generations entail the hemoglobin’s chemical modification, the third generation of hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers involves the encapsulation of hemoglobin within a synthetic membrane. OBJECTIVE: To summarize the latest progress in hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers. METHODS: Using “hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers, red blood cell substitutes, artificial oxygen carriers, artificial blood” as the key words in Chinese and English, respectively, we retrieved the related literatures on the preparation of hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers published from 2000 to 2019 in PubMed, CNKI, and WanFang databases. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Hemoglobin from fetus, invertebrate, and reptilian and β-subunit mutant hemoglobin have certain advantages in the preparation of hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers. Latest progress has been made mainly in the modification and encapsulation of hemoglobin. And combined use of other drugs can reduce the vascular toxicity of hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers. Some new possibilities in the application of hemoglobin oxygen carriers have been found, but the application of new hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers as red blood cell substitutes needs more animal experiments and clinical trials in the future.