Medical researchers are racing to come up with a full-proof COVID-19 vaccine or novel coronavirus cure. A crucial element in this quest for COVID-19 cure or developing any safe COVID-19 vaccine for human use is dependent on a specific type of crab, for which these horseshoe crabs are sacrificing their lives to save us.
Ancient horseshoe crab, with a lineage on Earth of more than 450 million years, are the providers of this crucial element - their blue blood! This blood of horseshoe crabs is used in medicine tests to detect any bacterial contamination.
The blood of the horseshoe crabs has a special compound that quickly clots in the presence of harmful microbial byproducts.?
This means the horseshoe crab blood acts as a natural test for purity of vaccines or medicines.
It can thus be assumed how important it is in the pursuit of a COVID-19 vaccine. It is, however, killing thousands of horseshoe crabs every year.
Crab blood has since long been the medical and pharmaceutical industry standard for testing. Unfortunately, this reason is enough to cause the death of an estimated 50,000 crabs during the annual blood harvest, as per a 2018 report by The Atlantic.
In 2018, nearly 500,000 crabs were caught for the blood harvest in the U.S. alone, as per the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Once the blood of these crabs is sucked using steel needles, they are released back into their natural habitat. Not all survive the ordeal though and thousands are believed to die from the practice every year.
Apart from their blood harvest, the population of horseshoe crabs is also dwindling because of pollution, fishing and loss of natural habitat due to sea level rise, the Atlantic report mentions.
Overtime, there has been a call for an alternative to the blue blood of horseshoe crabs for medical research. recombinant Factor C (rFC) is a possible synthetic alternative to the blue blood. It is produced by inserting horseshoe crab genes into lab-grown microorganisms and is used by some major firms for testing.
Eli Lilly is one such firm that recently also started testing a COVID-19 antibody in humans with just rFC for purity testing. Jay Bolden, a biologist with the company, tells the New York Times that his company made the switch because of rFC’s consistent quality, reduced costs as well as a lack of reliance on an animal population.?
In doing so, the company would also refrain from harming animals for the process. Eli Lilly claims to have tested more than 40,000 samples successfully using the rFC.