Since the National Red Cross Blood Centre of Laos (hereinafter referred to"Blood Center") "marriage", blood transfusion technology from Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province began a special journey of life support. The messenger in the meantime is the technology of blood filtration to remove white blood cells and the technology of blood preparation.
"Just recently, we often contacted the blood center to help them increase the removal rate of white blood cells in the transfused blood to more than 99.99, and the recovery rate of red blood cells and platelets to more than 90%." On October 16, in an interview with a reporter from Science and Technology Daily, Zhou Jun, general manager of Nanjing Shuangwei Biomedical Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shuangwei Biology"), showed a sense of time waiting for no one.

Blood transfusion is an important measure for rescuing critically ill patients, treating acute blood loss and severe chronic anemia. Before blood transfusion, it is necessary to filter out the white blood cells in the blood, reduce the immune response of blood transfusion, and ensure the safety of human blood transfusion.
"In our country, this practice has been promoted for decades. But when we attended an academic conference organized by the Blood Center in 2018, we found that Laos is still dominated by whole blood transfusions, and has not yet carried out component transfusions, let alone leukocyte filtration of the blood." Hu Zhengfang, general consultant of Sunway Biotechnology, realized that perhaps the blood component processing technology for infusion accumulated by the company over the past 20 years could benefit more people.

The technical team of Sunway Biology was born out of Nanjing Glass Fiber Research and Design Institute.In the 1990 s, Sunway Biology took the lead in developing white blood cell filtration and blood transfusion equipment products in China. The innovation ability of the enterprise is supported by an annual R & D investment of more than 1000 million yuan and a scientific research team of about 50 people.

In 2020, Shuangwei Biology applied to the Science and Technology Department of Jiangsu Province for the "the belt and road initiative" innovative cooperation project "Overseas Application Cooperation and Development of Blood Leukocyte Treatment Technology", which was finally approved.
"Our cooperation with the blood center is not a simple export of products, but to transmit the concepts of' leukocyte-depleted transfusion' and component transfusion to them, and to cooperate with each other to develop blood leukocyte-depleted treatment technology and develop hardware conditions, preparation technology and quality control standards suitable for the preparation of blood components in Laos. Only in this way can Lao people be infused with safe blood and their lives be guaranteed." Zhou Jun introduced.
Over the next two years, a series of component blood preparation techniques were passed between Sunway Bio and Blood Center.
In order to improve the efficiency of filtering white blood cells in the blood, Sunway Bio modified the surface of the filter membrane of the white blood cell filter to improve the filtering effect of white blood cells during warm blood filtration, and at the same time produced a soft-shell white blood cell filter to solve the hard-shell filter centrifugal blood prone to side leakage problem.

Since the cooperation between the two sides, Sunway Biology has developed a suitable for the national conditions of Laos.With 15 new products such as 350 ml blood component leukocyte removal filter, a fully automatic soft/hard shell filter welding equipment with independent intellectual property rights has been developed.

"At the same time, we introduced China's blood management standards to the blood center, especially the guidelines for monitoring the quality of component blood, the preparation and quality control of leukocyte-depleted mixed concentrated platelets, and helped them establish the business process of component blood preparation, including blood testing, blood management, quality management standards, and share with them important technologies for clinical evaluation." Cao Wei, director of Shuangwei Biological Marketing Center, for example, said that separating red blood cells, platelets and plasma from donated whole blood requires the help of a centrifuge, but the parameters of the centrifuge and the time for static deaggregation of platelets need to be explored slowly. Sunway biological will accumulate many years of operating experience to share with the blood center.

"We hope to use the technical capabilities we have accumulated over the years to improve the application rate of component transfusion and leukocyte-depleted blood components in Laos. The teaching and learning in the cooperation also urges us to continuously iterate on technology to adapt to the changing needs of market development. We hope to use the scientific and technological innovation of Chinese enterprises to provide more well-being for the lives and health of people in countries that build the 'Belt and Road." This vision in Zhou Jun's speech is also becoming a reality. Today, Shuangwei Bio's white blood cell filtration and blood transfusion equipment products have been promoted to more than 30 countries and regions including Brazil, Russia and other BRIC countries, as well as the "Belt and Road" countries.

The scientific and technological support of "small and beautiful" makes the road of win-win cooperation in "the belt and road initiative" reach all directions.