Friday, September 17, 2010

US Patent 7794699 - Nanostructured blood substitute

http://ip.com/patent/US7794699

In the HBO series True Blood the premise is that an artificial human blood substitute is invented allowing for vampires to come out of hiding. Thanks to the research behind this patent issued to the Michigan Molecular Institute such an artificial blood substitute could become a reality with the help of nanotechnology. Hopefully the vampire part will remain fiction. Claim 1 reads:  

1. A nano-structured compound capable of carrying oxygen and/or other gases, comprising: dendron, dendrimer, hyperbranched polymer, or dendrigraft having a plurality of branches, each branch including a plurality of repeat units that contain a fluorocarbon moiety represented by the formula —(CF2)x—, wherein x is an integer greater than 1, and each branch including a terminal repeat unit; and peripheral hydrophilic moieties covalently bonded to said terminal repeat units to provide solubility of the compound in aqueous media.

Labels: