An international team of scientists has managed to achieve a potentially groundbreaking feat by successfully producing a synthetic red blood cell (RBC), Science Alert reports.
According to the media outlet, in order to make their "Terminator red cell", the team first covered donated red blood cells with silica which was subsequently painted with "polymers of different charges".
Then, the scientists proceeded to scrape away "the silica and cell guts", and to coat the resulting polymer membrane with a "skin made from red blood cells", thus ending up with an "empty biconcave shell" which produced no signs of adverse effects in the lab mice it was injected into.
Describing their findings in ACS Nano, the researchers outlined several potential uses for their rebuilt red blood cell (RRBC), like "oxygen delivery, therapeutic drug delivery, magnetic manipulation, and toxin biosensing and detection", as the "modular procedures" they've developed allow fitting their cell with "functional cargos such as hemoglobin, drugs, magnetic nanoparticles and ATP biosensors".
"Taken together, RRBCs represent a class of long-circulating RBC-inspired artificial hybrid materials with a broad range of potential applications," the scientists stated.