Polymer/hemoglobin assemblies: biodegradable oxygen carriers for artificial red blood cells

In routine clinical procedures, blood transfusion is now suffering from the defects of the blood products, like cross-matching, short storage time and virus infection. Various blood substitutes have been designed by researchers through continual efforts. With recent progress in nanotechnology, new types of artificial red blood cells with cellular structure are available. This article aims to describe some artificial red blood cells which encapsulate or conjugate hemoglobin molecules through various approaches, especially the nanoscale self-assembly technique, to mitigate the adverse effects of free hemoglobin molecules. These types of artificial red blood cell systems, which make use of biodegradable polymers as matrix materials, show advantages over the traditional types.