The legend of Dracula has long been synonymous with Transylvania, so it's appropriate that the first-ever successful artificial-blood experiment comes from Cluj-Napoca, a city in the infamous Romanian province.
After six years of experimentation on mice, Romanian researcher Dr. Radu Silaghi-Dumitrescu and his team found that their blood formula had no harmful side effects. Now they hope to test it on human subjects in the next few years, according to Medical Daily. 
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Unlike other experiments, the blood is produced using hemerythrin, a protein extracted from sea worms, and mixed with water and salts. Hemerythrin transports oxygen in the blood of marine invertebrates, while previous artificial-bloods tests relied on hemoglobin, a red protein that transfers oxygen in the blood of almost all living organisms.
While hemoglobin can't withstand physical and chemical stress when introduced into a living organism, the Romanian research team discovered that hemerythrin is much more resilient and suitable for the stress of transfusion.
In an interview with Medical Daily, Silaghi-Dumitrescu said, "Doctors can use the artificial blood to reduce infection rates during blood donation, and to supply lost stores in patients for several hours or even up to a day."
The Romanian team's experiment builds upon the research of Edinburgh and Bristol University’s Professor Marc Turner, according to The Independent. In 2011, Turner produced red blood cells from stem cells taken from bone marrow.
Silaghi-Dumitrescu and his colleagues said their artificial blood presented no health risks to the mice, and that they are working toward getting approval from Romania's clinical trial regulatory agency to test it on humans. Silaghi-Dumitrescu added that eventually, "instant blood" could be available, where simply adding water to a portable tube would produce artificial blood.
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