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| Breakthrough in blood research confirms Apollo is on the right track |
Apollo's hcx proteins | It's one of medicine's holy grails: creating one universal donor blood type.
European scientists say they've discovered just that, and they've created a technique to convert all donated blood into Group O, which can be safely given to anyone. The new groundbreaking research has implications for the work being done by Apollo researchers, with both groups essentially showing that the manipulation of sugars on proteins can reduce the risk of immune rejection.
The European research has shown that altering sugars on blood proteins can convert types A, B and AB into the universally-compatible type O.
In a similar way, one of Apollo’s key research platforms is the development and manipulation of proteins to prevent their being rejected by the immune system.
The team that developed a way to convert all blood types to O are from the University of Copenhagen. In the journal Nature Biotechnology the scientists reported the discovery of bacterial enzymes that effectively strip the sugars from red blood cells that make them either type A, B or AB.
Without these sugars, the immune system of the person being transfused simply does not “see” the transfusion as foreign. There is no rejection, no life threatening risk – and, more importantly, less chance of running out of blood for people with “hard-to-match” blood types.
The work – which received worldwide attention following its publication – confirms that Apollo’s work into protein manipulation is on the right track.
Apollo’s suite of over 80 human proteins are unique in a number of ways: the first is that they are all made in human cells, compared to all others which are made in bacteria or rodent cells. Proteins made in non-human sources have limited application in therapies such as growth factors for cancer treatment – because of the risk of triggering an immune response in the patient.
Apollo is also breaking new ground in developing fully human post-translational modifications: effectively adding or subtracting (as in the Danish research) sugars to make the proteins’ activities specific for individual diseases. |
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