Innovative blood loss treatment awarded

A James Cook University researcher who invented a treatment that helps resuscitate a patient following massive blood loss has won the best-of-the-best study at the American Heart Association’s Resuscitation Science Symposium.

Professor Geoffrey Dobson from JCU’s Heart and Trauma Research Laboratory will receive the award, with his international collaborators, at a special research meeting in Los Angeles in November.

Hayley Letson, PhD candidate and Professor Dobson’s research associate at JCU, will receive the Young Investigator Award at the same meeting.

The team has won the best-of-the-best awards, judged by a panel of experts from trauma and military fields, three years running – as well as two Young Investigator awards.

Professor Dobson, who is also Chief Scientific Officer of Hibernation Therapeutics, said his invention could have life-changing effects in battlefield situations.

“At the moment, combat medics or emergency first responder teams have a limited range of pharmacological options for rescuing and stabilising the hearts of soldiers or civilians following massive haemorrhage in the first few minutes of injury,” he said.

“For the first time in the history of fluid resuscitation, we may have the capability to develop ‘one solution’ for surgical stabilisation of casualties suffering catastrophic blood loss,” he said.

The treatment will help enable a casualty to be rapidly evacuated to surgical care.

Professor Dobson and his team at JCU and Hibernation Therapeutics are working with the US Military and the US Naval Medical Research Center to develop two products.

One is a small volume adenocaine and magnesium resuscitation fluid for severe blood loss to be administered on location, enabling a casualty to be stabilised for evacuation for surgical care.

A second is an injectable product which aims to arrest the whole body and brain for 10 to 20 minutes after catastrophic blood loss, for immediate transport to a trauma facility.

Professor Dobson said the goal was to have two US Food and Drug Administration-approved products from “bench to battlefield” in five years.

In 2011 Dr Dobson was elected as Fellow of the American Heart Association for scientific and professional accomplishments and volunteer leadership and service to heart awareness

Issued September 10, 2012

JCU Media contact: Caroline Kaurila (07) 4781 4586