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The lifesaving secret hidden inside a horseshoe crab's blue blood
- larodi 3mo agoMost horseshoe related posts on HN come complete with abysmal amount of ads in the articles. Wonder why…
- donkey_brains 3mo agoGo crabs go!
- tecoholic 3mo agoThere is an episode in Elementary that involves the Horseshoe, its extraction and conservation. It is just a regular episode, but the visual presentation of the extraction was fascinating. I hope they are real. :)
- goosejuice 3mo agoThey are indeed real.. weird. Like something out of starship troopers. I've held quite a few. Haven't given one a phlebotomy though.
- tecoholic 2mo agoThat’s so cool.
- jzelinskie 3mo agoHas anyone on HN gotten the horseshoe crab pin and can share the story?
- wuschel 3mo agoA pin? I did and fought for the cause. Happy to share. See my other post in this thread.
- y-curious 3mo agoFew things look more cruel and dystopic than the rooms where they harvest the blood of horseshoe crabs
- b40d-48b2-979e 3mo agoCan't spell cruel and dystopic without Eli Lilly.
- andsoitis 3mo agoIs there any alternative to using horseshoe crab blood in the development of the pharmaceutical compounds that keep us safe?
- beagle3 3mo agoThey are a (relatively) recent part of the production pipeline. Before introducing horseshoe crab blood, they used to inject rabbits and wait a couple of weeks. Now the wait has been reduced to minutes - which reduces storage costs and increases certainty. But there are other options.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- vlovich123 3mo agoIt’s in the article - Eli Lilly has largely switched to a synthetic protein.
- borski 3mo agoRecombinant factor C (rFC) has been available since 2003. TFA alludes to it: “They have created a lab-made alternative to test medicines, so no crabs are needed. “It is the exact same protein, it is just made through biotechnology,” Bolden said. Bolden said scientists at Eli Lilly tested thousands of samples on hundreds of different products and determined the alternative performs the same or better than purified horseshoe crab blood does. Starting in 2016, Eli Lilly started to switch its testing to the lab-made version. Now 80 percent of it is done using the alternative. The company plans to entirely eliminate the use of crab blood.”
- fenestella 3mo ago[dead]
- wuschel 3mo agoThe horseshoe crab story comes up on HN now and then. Typical media game, the crabs crawled out their appointed time slot in the media publishing calendar. Here is a full disclaimer (from the trenches of startup land): I co-founded and ran a biotech startup that tried to disintermediate that particular supply chain. We even flew to SF to speak to some of the YC chaps, and talked to a strategic buyer. Our technology R&D failed to deliver, unfortunately. And the market is fairly small. But I learned a great deal re that particular business, and a lot of more general lessons. All in all, a crazy run with so many crazy stories, I need to write them down one day. Horseshoe crabs are truly fascinating animals in respect to their physique, lineage and behaviour. But these things one can read up on Wikipedia. We had quite a bunch of them in our lab (and living room). They were supposed to be voracious predators to all things they can eat, but ours developed a rather expensive habit in captivity by only eating the most expensive of goods from the local fish market. They would not eat anything else.
- intheitmines 3mo agoThe crab had correctly identified it's importance within the org and therefore comp structure
- DANmode 3mo ago> habit in captivity by only eating the most expensive of goods No animal behaviorist, but isn’t this depression? (Nervous system expects one reality, gets a different one, takes whatever ++ it comes across and maximizes it?)
- thisislife2 3mo agoWhy do you think it is depression? My first thought was that they spoiled it by giving into its tantrums (I experienced the same with a pet in the past).
- DANmode 3mo agoThey’re…in captivity, in a lab setting, with no other details about matching their natural, expected habitat. For starters.
- tzs 3mo agoIf you follow the whole process from the point of view of the horseshoe crab it is disturbingly similar to the stories many people who claim to be alien abduction victims tell.
- Fokamul 3mo agoI vote for stem cells extraction from babies in a same way crab blood is extracted.