ATTAINABLE HORSESHOE CRABS AND THE BIOMED
What makes a horseshoe crabs’ blood so special? Horseshoe crab blood carries factors that react to antigens found on and in gram negative bacteria walls by forming a clot around it. The clot isolates the bacteria, and protects the crab from infection. The blood also begins a healing process similar to ours where we form a clot, a scab, and eventually wounds heal. What makes LAL so important? The LAL test is the most sensitive, accurate and cost effective test on the market today to detect contaminating endotoxins. This test was first licensed by the FDA in the 1970’s, and is now the gold standard. It can detect endotoxin in the parts per billion. That’s like finding a grain of sand in an Olympic swimming pool. Prior to LAL, rabbits were used to test for endotoxin by injecting the rabbit with samples of the product being manufactured and waiting two or three days to see if the rabbit developed a fever. Hundreds of thousands of rab- bits were required to be held and utilized this way. LAL based assays replace this test with one that is more humane, more accurate, cost effective and can give results in a test tube, in about an hour. There are very few people you are likely to meet in your lifetime who have not benefited from a bacterial endotoxins test. What types of things are tested with the blood? The FDA has mandated (it is the law) that all injectable or indwelling materials must be tested for endotoxin contamination before being released for sale. This is to protect the public from products that are not sufficiently free of materials that can make a patient ill from exposure to gram-negative cell wall material. If endotoxin enters your blood stream it can make you sick and possibly even kill you. So the test we manufacture is used for medical devices, such as knee replacements, stents, heart valves, intravenous solutions; and drugs and vaccines like childhood immunizations, insulin, flu vaccine and chemotherapy drugs to name a few. Anything injected or implanted into the human body must be free of endotoxin.
I have read somewhere crab blood is worth $15,000 a quart. Is this true?
Absolutely not, this is a myth sensationalized by some me- dia. Manufacturing LAL which is made from the white blood cells of horseshoe crabs is a complex process that is regulated by the FDA and must be done under extremely clean condi- tions. A typical LAL test costs less than $20. In terms of the impact it has
had on human health and safety, it is safe to say it has saved many lives and is therefore priceless. Where do the crabs you bleed come from?
Most of the crabs that come to our facility are from Massachu- setts waters, Vineyard Sound, Nantucket Sound, and Buzzards Bay. Fisherman catch them a number of different ways but must follow strict regulations on size, number of crabs har- vested, and quota management.
How does the process of bleeding crabs work? The process is very similar to when people donate blood. The crabs are checked for good health, placed in a very clean laboratory, where we disin- fect a portion of the shell, and carefully insert a sterile needle. The crabs have a sinus in the dorsal aspect of their body just under the shell that holds excess blood, we collect from that region. The way the crabs are held, limits the blood that can be harvested to the dorsal sinus, the majority of the blood which is in the gill area is untouched. Studies have shown that the crabs tolerate this process very well and the overwhelming majority survives. What threats face the horseshoe crabs today, are they endangered? Like any sea creature, horseshoe crabs are dependent on a suitable environment in which to live and reproduce. Water quality is an important
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