The development of albumin solutions in the Second World War.

Abstract

By the spring of 1940 it had become clear that the United States of America would eventually enter the Second World War, and there was a need to mobilise the nation’s scientific resources in anticipation of the conflict. Among the requests made to the National Research Council (which had been established during the First World War to encourage and coordinate ‘the employment of scientific methods in strengthening the national defense’) the US army and navy sought advice on the procurement of whole blood, as well as the production of stable blood derivatives, or substitutes, which could be used in the ‘emergency treatment of traumatic shock, burns and haemorrhage resulting from modern military operations.’ Chaired by Walter Cannon, Professor of Physiology at Harvard Medical School, the National Research Council Committee on Transfusions first met in Washington DC on 31 May 1940. Representatives of the American Red Cross were also in attendance. In addition to discussing issues relating to whole blood and plasma, hopes were expressed that a substitute for human plasma could be found. ‘In the interest of clear thinking’, it was agreed that protein biochemists should be engaged in this pursuit, and Cannon therefore approached Edwin Cohn and colleagues from the Department of Physical Chemistry, Harvard Medical School, to investigate whether a safe and effective plasma fraction could be isolated from bovine blood, which was readily available as a by-product of the meatpacking industry. During the summer of 1940, novel techniques for the separation of plasma into five major fractions were devised at Harvard. Later known as the Cohn process, this utilised ethanol–water mixtures at low temperature and controlled pH, protein and salt concentration, and could easily be scaled up for industrial production. It quickly became apparent that the albumin fraction had many desirable physiological properties for the Cover photo. Pressure bandaged after they suffered burns when their ship was hit by a kamikaze attack, men are fed aboard the USS Solace (AH-5). c. 1945. Courtesy of US National Archives and Record Administration.