A surgery professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City says a fluid made from soybean oil, egg lecithin and egg yolk revived mice that had been drained of blood to clinical death, with nearly 100% survival in hemorrhagic shock tests. Dr. Cuthbert Simpkins, who founded Vivacelle Bio, calls the formula VBI-1 and says it could reduce blood shortages and avoid ischemia reperfusion injury, the tissue damage that can occur when blood flow returns. His quote: “The mice woke up. They woke up from being dead.”
Not everyone is ready to retire the blood bag. Dr. Richard Galbraith, a pathologist and director of transfusion medicine at University Health KC, calls the research promising but says a completely synthetic replacement for blood is extremely unlikely, and donations will remain vital for cancer and chronic disease patients. Human clinical trials are still one to two years away, with Simpkins hoping for FDA approval and market availability by 2031.
The timing is hard to ignore. The American Red Cross declared a national blood supply crisis in 2026, only the second such warning in its history. For Suncoast hospitals and trauma centers, shortages are a real planning problem, not a distant headline. So while the science develops, local blood drives still do the work that saves lives today. Would you try a synthetic blood substitute if it were approved? Let us know.
