A new research collaboration between the University of Queensland and Lifeblood will explore new manufacturing techniques for laboratory-grown blood to increase production and reduce costs.
If blood could be grown in labs efficiently and at scale, it could save lives by producing red blood cells for people with ultra-rare blood types.
Lifeblood researcher Becky Griffiths hopes that within four years, they will be able to produce bigger yields of lab-grown blood at a reasonable cost that could then be tested in clinical trials.
Joe Fa'agase has a blood type so rare, three units of his blood are kept on ice in case of emergencies.
The 32-year-old from Logan, south of Brisbane, has been told he risks a reaction if he is ever transfused with a different blood type.
Joe and his three brothers are among 14 Australian blood donors with a blood type called Jk null.
The siblings have only known about their blood type — found in less than 1 per cent of the Pacific Islander community — in the past few years after their aunt Noa Fa'agase fell ill and started needing transfusions.
At the time, Lifeblood held no supplies of Jk null blood, triggering a national call-out.
"While we were testing … they were actually looking at trying to get the blood from Hawaii," Joe recalled.
The struggle with supplying blood for people with blood types, such as Joe, has prompted calls for more Australians of mixed heritage to donate, given just 3 per cent of the population donates blood.
It's also fostered new Australian research into creating laboratory-grown blood at scale for use in such patients in future.
Lifeblood scientists can already grow functional red blood cells from donor stem cells in the lab for research purposes, but it takes three weeks to produce a teaspoonful, and the process is prohibitively expensive.
Producing a unit of lab-grown blood costs about $1 million.
But a new research collaboration between the University of Queensland and Lifeblood will explore new manufacturing techniques to increase production and reduce costs.
The $2.5 million project over four years is being developed through the Solutions and Manufacturing Advanced Regenerative Therapies Co-operative Research Centre (SMART CRC).
Lifeblood researcher Becky Griffiths said lab-grown blood would never replace human donations.
But if it could be grown efficiently and at scale, it could save lives through being able to produce red blood cells for people with ultra-rare blood types, such as Joe and his family.
Dr Griffiths said lab-grown blood could also be beneficial for newborn babies requiring transfusions.
Before moving to Lifeblood, she was part of the UK group that designed the protocol to make lab-grown blood.
"Australia is one of the few countries that can produce lab-grown red blood cells and it's using the same protocols that were developed in the UK," Dr Griffiths said.
Her hope is that within four years, they will be able to produce bigger yields of lab-grown blood at a reasonable cost that could then be tested in clinical trials.
UQ biomedical engineer Dr Mark Allenby said existing processes for producing small doses of lab-grown red blood cells relied on expensive reagents and complicated manual techniques.
"If you want this to become a therapy, that could reach patients … we would need to be able to grow more red blood cells more cheaply and that's where this project comes in," he said.
"If we can't engineer more efficient solutions, these kinds of exciting therapies are never going to get off the ground.
"By engineering smarter and more efficient manufacturing processes, we can help bring costs down and make these treatments more accessible to patients who need them."
The Fa'agase brothers donate blood when their aunt needs a transfusion. But providing enough blood can be challenging given people can only donate whole blood every 12 weeks and health conditions, such as active infections, can postpone the process.
Three units of Joe's blood is held in a blood bank in Sydney, but in emergency situations the brothers would have to donate to each other.
"Somebody could accidentally get into a car accident tomorrow and then we'd have to be the donations because we can't accept other blood donations from anybody else," he said.
Joe, who works in reality television, admits the situation sometimes leaves him "a little bit scared", but he's "excited" about the research, acknowledging it is still in its early days.
"It gives a reassurance that we will be okay, that we don't have to just rely on each other. There's going to be another alternative," he said.
Lab-grown blood produced at scale would have to be rigorously tested in human trials and then approved by regulatory bodies, such as Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration, before it could be routinely used in patients.