2023 AIChE Annual Meeting

(28t) Promising Routes for Mitigating RBC Storage Lesions in As-3

Authors

Gomez Pastora, J. - Presenter, Texas Tech University
Ciannella, S., Texas Tech
Weigand, M., The Ohio State University
Strayer, J., The Ohio State University
Tran, L., Texas Tech University
Ortiz, I., University of Cantabria
Chalmers, J., The Ohio State University
Wu, X., The Ohio State Universtity
Red blood cells (RBCs) are essential for transfusion therapy in various medical conditions. To extend the RBC shelf-life and thus enable their use for lifesaving therapies, RBCs are cold-stored in preservative solutions. However, the storage of RBC units is currently limited to 42 days since RBCs experience harmful effects, often known as “storage lesions”, that result in reduced cell viability and function.1-2 On this basis, exploring novel strategies for enhancing preservative solutions is of utmost importance in order to increase the RBC storage period. Hence, we herein aim at enhancing the RBC storage in additive solution-3 (AS-3), which is one of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved storage solutions.3 For that purpose, we followed two routes, namely, modifying the pH of the AS-3, and/or inducing anaerobic storage conditions with the enzyme Oxyrase. Particularly, RBCs obtained from 5 healthy donors were stored for 42 days in AS-3 under standard (pH= 5.8), acidic (pH= 4.5) and basic (pH= 8.4) conditions, without or with (2.5 vol% or 5 vol%) Oxyrase; thus, the suitability of 9 preservative solutions based on AS-3 was probed. To investigate how the preservative solution conditions affect RBC storage lesions we analyzed weekly the dissolved oxygen of the solution, the RBC mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH) by spectrophotometric techniques, cell lysis or hemolysis, as well as the formation of microvesicles using a Coulter Counter, and the morphology of RBCs via microscopy. The preliminary results suggest that basic AS-3 exhibits an enhanced storage performance. Collectively, the insights gained from this study can guide the design of storage solutions based on AS-3 that enable the maintenance of the RBC quality beyond 42 days, which may represent an important step forward in the challenge of RBC’s long-term storage and might alleviate current RBC unit shortages in blood banks.