US Military Races to Develop Shelf-Stable Synthetic Blood

The urgency is rooted in incidents such as the February 2007 loss of Morphine 1-2, a dual-rotor casualty evacuation helicopter. The aircraft had just flown three wounded soldiers to a field hospital in Balad, north of Baghdad, when it received another call: an emergency mission through insurgent-controlled territory in daylight. Helicopters normally operate in such areas only at night and with lights off. As Morphine 1-2 passed near Karmah, in eastern Al-Anbar province, an insurgent fired a portable missile launcher. The tail gunner, who likely saw the missile, shouted for the pilot to evade, but the missile had locked on. A blast started a fire on board. After the pilot fought the failing machine for 58 seconds, the helicopter crashed, killing all seven crew members.

Lieutenant Commander Robert Murray, a Navy officer and program manager at DARPA who studied the incident as an intelligence officer, said the helicopter was on what the military calls a blood run. He said it was getting blood and bringing it back, and that it was the highest priority besides casualty evacuation.

About 90% of preventable battlefield deaths are caused by hemorrhage, and hemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal deaths worldwide. A study published in Transfusion in 2025 found that of 1.2 million trauma patients in the United States who potentially needed blood before reaching a hospital, just 1% received it. The American College of Surgeons says the shortage results in about 10,000 preventable deaths each year in the United States; globally, the figure is likely in the millions.

Blood's storage limits worsen the problem. Whole blood lasts only 35 days when refrigerated, so blood banks separate out components. Platelets, which help wounds clot, are typically stored at room temperature and last for a week or less. Hospitals and the military freeze red blood cells, which carry oxygen, and plasma, the protein-rich liquid that restores volume and aids coagulation. Once thawed, both will spoil within days. 'What happens if I don't know when I'm going to be attacked? Well, thaw it and you let it expire, right?' Murray said.

A JAMA study of combat injuries in Afghanistan suggests that a patient who needs a transfusion has 36 minutes to begin receiving it. Murray said that if an injury is survivable—and most hemorrhage is classified as survivable—a patient is almost guaranteed to survive if blood is given before the 36-minute mark. After that, the chance of survival 'starts to drop precipitously.'

Murray, who has a PhD in physiology, is leading RAPIID, whose name stands for resuscitation and prevention of ischemia-induced dysfunction. RAPIID is set to get underway late this year and picks up on decades of work to synthesize blood or help it last longer. It follows a prior $47.5 million DARPA project called FSHARP, for fieldable solutions for hemorrhage with bio-artificial resuscitation products, in which researchers have demonstrated promising results in animals. Trials for the different blood components will run in parallel. The goal is to have bags of dried blood products deployed in the field by 2029. Murray is coordinating clinical trials with the FDA while also sourcing transfusion equipment, from combat-durable storage bags to tests that could measure how much artificial blood a patient already has.

KaloCyte technicians use a tangential flow filtration machine to process unencapsulated hemoglobin, according to MIT Technology Review. After processing, the hemoglobin is concentrated and then freeze-dried to make it shelf-stable.

Plasma is considered the most accessible target. Researchers have known how to isolate and freeze-dry plasma, the yellowish liquid that makes up 55% of whole human blood, since the late 1930s. The broader effort faces pressure because blood drives may not deliver in time after a mass-casualty event.