Why do we perform research activities in a blood bank? Our primary mission is to deliver efficient and safe blood products to our patients. This simple mission has not changed for decades but its interpretation is highly dependent upon the medical and scientific context and the technologies available. Transfusion medicine has been completely reshaped, from the use of glass bottles to store blood products, and limited screening technologies till the seventies, followed by the introduction in the eighties of plastic bags that guarantee complete sterility from the donor to the patient, the generalisation of serologic screening and the introduction of nucleic acid testing , that allowed to reduce the risk of pathogen transmission through the transfusion chain to unprecedently low levels, and by the use of additive solutions to improve the storage of red blood cells and platelets. Recently, we have introduced universal pathogen reduction technologies for platelets, and will soon introduce it for fresh frozen plasmas and red blood cells. All these technologies allowed to improve blood product availability and safety, but terribly complexified blood banking.
In this medical and technical context, it is a challenge to decide which technologies should be adopted tomorrow, among those developed by industrial and pharmaceutical partners. The primary mission of our research activity is to orientate technical and scientific choices that we will have to make in the future, to develop analytical tools and methodologies to allow us to compare and evaluate the technologies available to collect, prepare and store blood products.
All technologies available today were developed by industrial actors, and very few public laboratories, and the possibilities we have today are completely determined by the choices these actors made ten years ago. Our ambition is to contribute to shape the transfusion medicine in the next decade, and modestly, to orientate the technological and scientific orientations of our community.
Lastly, delivering better and safer blood products requires expert staff that understands all the scientific aspects of blood collection, component isolation and storage. Developing this knowledge and expertise implies a strong commitment to basic and applied research in our laboratories.
These three strong convictions are at the core of our research mission at SRTS VD : research is and will be a strong commitment for us, so as to continue to deliver better and safer blood products to our patients.
Protein separation and analysis
•Large 2DE systems ◦IPGphor (Amersham Biosciences)
◦Electrophoresis system (Bio-Rad)
•Electrophoresis and blotting systems (SDS-PAGE, 2DE, Bio-Rad)
•ImageScanner and densitometer (Amesham Biosciences)
•Low pressure LC (Bio-Rad)
•HPLC Cap (Agilent 1100 series with DAD detector, Agilent)
•LC-MS ◦HPLC Ultimate-3000 nanoLCRS (Cap, DAD, Thermo Scientific)
◦ESI-MS amaZon ETD (Bruker)
Spectrophotometers
•Plate readers (Bio-Rad)
•Spectrophotometer Ultrospec 1000 (Pharmacia Biotech)
•Spectrophotometer (NanoDrop 2000c, Thermo Scientific)
•Fluoroskan Ascent (Thermo Scientific)
•Thrombin generation (CAT, Stago)
Molecular biology
•Gel electrophoresis agarose system (Amersham Biosciences)
•Thermocycler (PEQSTAR, PEQLAB)
Analysis of cells
•Aggregometer APACT 4004 (LABiTec)
•Coagulometer MC4 micro plus (MERLIN medical)
•Flow cytometer (FACSCaibur, Becton Dickinson)
•Sysmex (KX-21N, Sysmex DIGITANA AG)
Others
•Centrifuges : 2 benchtop centrifuges (Hitachi, Hettich) and 1 floor centrifuge (Hettich)
•Ultracentrifuge (L-70, Beckman)
•Vacuum dryer (EZ-2plus, Genevac)
•Thermomixer, dry heating bath, ovens
•Imager (LAS 500, GE HealthCare)