Advances in clotting factor treatment for congenital hemorrhagic disorders

During the last 50 years, clotting factor replacement has evolved from the use of frozen plasma in the 1950s, through the serendipitous discovery of cryoprecipitate in the 1960s and the development of purified clotting factors in the 1970s and 1980s, to the era of recombinant clotting factors beginning in the 1990s. The dawn of the new millennium has seen the refinement of recombinant factor (rF) VIII with enhanced safety via the elimination of plasma-derived culture media or product stabilizers. During the last decade of the 20th century, a cure for hemophilia through gene therapy became a possibility. This was, in part, facilitated by availability of large (dogs) and small (mice) animal models for hemophilia A and B. Although this review will focus primarily on clotting factor replacement, the reader may refer to recent discourse on gene therapy for hemophilia.