Abstract
Polymerized human hemoglobin (PolyhHb) is being studied as a possible
red blood cell (RBC) substitute for use in scenarios where blood is not
available. While the O 2 carrying capacity of PolyhHb
makes it appealing as an O 2 therapeutic, the commercial
PolyhHb PolyHeme® (Northfield Laboratories Inc., Evanston, IL) was never
approved for clinical use due to the presence of large quantities of low
molecular weight polymeric (LMW) Hb species (<500 kDa), which
have been shown to elicit vasoconstriction, systemic hypertension, and
oxidative tissue injury in vivo. Previous bench-top scale studies
in our lab demonstrated the ability to synthesize and purify PolyhHb
using a two-stage tangential flow filtration (TFF) purification process
to remove almost all undesirable Hb species (>0.2 µm and
<500 kDa) in the material to create a product that should be
safer for transfusion. Therefore, in order to enable future large animal
studies and eventual human clinical trials, PolyhHb synthesis and
purification processes need to be scaled up to the pilot scale. Hence in
this study, we describe pilot scale synthesis and purification of
PolyhHb. Characterization of pilot scale PolyhHb showed that PolyhHb
could be successfully produced to yield biophysical properties conducive
for its use as an RBC substitute.