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Bacterial enzyme strips away blood types to create universal donor blood
Using enzymes produced by a bacteria that almost everyone has in their gut, researchers have removed the antigens from red blood cells that determine blood type, putting us within reach of producing universal donor blood.
There’s a global shortage of blood supplies needed for life-saving transfusions due to factors that include an aging population with a higher demand for it and a lack of volunteer donors. “For the first time, the new enzyme cocktails not only remove the well-described A and B antigens, but also extended variants previously not recognized as problematic for transfusion safety,” said Maher Abou Hachem, co-corresponding author of the study and scientist at DTU’s Department of Biotechnology and Biomedicine. “What is special about the [intestinal] mucosa is that bacteria, which are able to live on this material, often have tailor-made enzymes to break down mucosal sugar structures, which include blood group ABO antigens,” Abou Hachem said.
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