A Medical Device Daily

The Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC; location) has received about $3.4 million from the Department of Defense to develop Hemopure, a blood substitute product made by Biopure (Cambridge, Massachusetts), as a potential treatment of combat casualties with brain injury and concomitant hemorrhagic shock.

Biopure is collaborating with NMRC to develop HBOC-201 as a platform for what it says would be the first multifunction blood substitute for trauma patients. The NMRC is expected to conduct the preclinical work towards a multi-functional product for traumatic brain injury.

The project is part of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder/Traumatic Brain Injury Research Program of the Office of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, the company said.

The funding is in addition to the $22.5 million previously allocated by Congress for the military for research of HBOC-201, Biopure said. The company said it anticipates the work relating to the multi-function blood substitute development will begin as soon as "certain agreements" are completed.

It also said it continues to support the NMRC's efforts toward lifting the clinical hold on the NMRC's investigational new drug application to conduct the pending, proposed clinical trial in trauma patients, Restore Effective Survival in Shock.

Hemopure is approved for sale in South Africa for the treatment of surgical patients who are acutely anemic. The company is developing Hemopure for other indications and is supporting the U.S. Navy's government-funded efforts to develop a potential out-of-hospital trauma indication.