Title:
The race for a coronavirus vaccine runs on horseshoe crab blood
Author:
Alex Fox
Published:
Smithsonian Magazine, 8 June 2020
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/race-coronavirus-vaccine-runs-horseshoe-crab-blood-180975048/
From the article:
Humans owe a debt to the strange-looking, ancient horseshoe crab. Its blue blood is used in medicine to ensure that anything that gets injected or implanted into the human body is free of potentially life-threatening bacterial contamination. A special compound in the crab’s blood quickly clots in the presence of endotoxins, microbial byproducts that can be harmful, supplying a perfect natural test for purity. In the race to find a COVID-19 vaccine, horseshoe crab blood is very important.
But an estimated 50,000 crabs die during the annual blood harvest, and these ancient arthropods are also being threatened by pollution, overfishing and habitat loss due to sea level rise, reported Sarah Zhang in the Atlantic in 2018.