A little over a month ago, the French Blood Establishment opened a plasma donation center in the North, the very first in France. Plasma is used to manufacture blood-derived medicines, the demand for which is increasing.
In the very first plasma donation center of the French Blood Establishment, which opened in Hazebrouck in the North, there are only plasma donations. In this liquid, there are red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. Morgane donates her plasma every two weeks: “I learned that I was a universal plasma donor so I told myself that plasma was more interesting than donating my blood. I understood that it was used for research, for treatments. I the impression that it is more useful”.
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The EFS opened this house because supply is not keeping up with demand. It is looking for plasma donors, a donation that is less known than conventional blood donation and which allows, among other things, to produce blood-derived drugs. With the aging of the population, the increase in chronic diseases, there are indeed more needs.
The plasma donation made by Morgane is therefore an essential gesture, carried out in less than an hour. “His plasma is specifically used for plasma transfusion, for people who do big shocks hemorrhagic, describes Samantha, nurse. It can also be used to make medicine.
“We are going to get the proteins that are contained in the plasma to make drugs like immunoglobulin, which is used by people who are on chemotherapy, or drugs based on coagulation factors”.
Samantha, nurseat franceinfo
Soon a new production plant in France
The government wants to relocate the production of certain drugs to France to avoid shortages and those derived from blood are no exception. “Only 35% of drugs are made from plasma in France. However, these needs are exponential. We have more and more diseases to treat and therefore, if we want to manage to increase this percentage of manufacturing of drugs derived from blood, we are obliged to intensify this collection of plasma, so as not to be forced either to buy at exorbitant prices, or not to have the drugs. We have a real issue of national sovereignty on this “explains Dr. Annie-Claude Manteau, director of the French Blood Establishment for Hauts-de-France and Normandy.
Less than a hundred kilometers away, in Arras in Pas-de-Calais, a new blood-derived medicine production plant is due to open. It will be operational from the end of 2024. “We will therefore have to almost double our plasma collection to supply this factory, to produce blood-derived drugs for the French market”, says Dr. Annie-Claude Manteau. Two bioproduction sites are already established, in Lille and Les Ulis, in the Paris region. The Arras plant should enable production capacity to be tripled.