Richard Meehan
CEO, Velico Medical
Promoting plasma self-sufficiency and eliminating cold chain delays could transform emergency trauma care.
Richard Meehan has heard many horrific and tragic stories from doctors and first responders about preventable deaths caused by uncontrolled bleeding.
“You only need to spend three or four minutes with military or civilian clinicians to understand how critical immediate access to blood products is,” he says. “If someone is injured in an accident or on the battlefield and is haemorrhaging, their chances of survival are at least 30% greater if they’re given a transfusion of blood or a blood component such as plasma at the point of care.¹ Yet, I’m continuously told of patients who die at the roadside because blood products weren’t available in time.”
Part of the challenge comes down to cold chain logistics, as blood and plasma must be frozen for storage and transportation. “Blood and plasma can take 40 minutes to defrost before they’re ready for use,” explains Meehan, President, CEO and Chairman of Velico, a company focused on developing blood-based technologies. “But in emergencies, minutes matter and 40 minutes can be too late for the patient.”
Minutes matter in trauma situations
Severe haemorrhage remains one of the leading causes of preventable death, and he sees a rare opportunity to shift that reality. “I didn’t begin my career in biotechnology,” he says. “But I’m now working in a field where, when we succeed, we have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives over the coming years and materially reshape the trajectory of emergency medicine worldwide.”
Meehan’s company aims to completely remove the need for a cold chain by developing a “plugin” manufacturing system that fits into existing labs and allows hospitals, blood centres and the military to produce their own spray-dried plasma in just half an hour.
This is “a life sciences game changer” because the dried plasma is stored in an ultra-lightweight, flexible PVC bag (no fragile containers or space-heavy storage needed) and can be rehydrated in the back of an ambulance or point of injury, and ready for transfusion in just two-and-a-half minutes.
Because the supply of dried plasma is constrained globally, the solution offers another benefit. Rather than relying on expensive shipments from centralised pharma factories, a decentralised model allows blood centres to build their own local, scalable and high-capacity spray-dried plasma production.
“We live in an unstable geo-political environment, healthcare systems are seeking sovereign solutions,” says Meehan. “Decentralisation enables countries to manage their own plasma supplies and reduces reliance on external commercial providers.”
This is about human outcomes because haemorrhaging can happen to anyone
Lives saved from day one
Last year, a first-in-human Phase 1 safety trial for the company’s spray-dried plasma product yielded positive results, so Meehan hopes it will become commercially available in the next 18 months.
“When it does, the impact will be immediately obvious,” he insists. “Consider the time required for an air ambulance to reach an injured person in remote regions such as the Australian outback or the Rocky Mountains. The ability to administer plasma rapidly at the point of care could alter outcomes from the outset. We’ll see lives being saved from day one.”
“This is about human outcomes because haemorrhaging can happen to anyone,” says Meehan. “These lives aren’t just anonymous figures in clinical trials or statistics in trauma care. They’re people we know and love: your wife or husband, son or daughter, parents, neighbour, colleague or your community.”
Spray-dried plasma could save their lives. That’s why, in the next decade, he wants to see a global network of spray-dried plasma production facilities.
“Trauma doctors worldwide have wanted this type of solution for decades,” he says. “For us, success isn’t defined by market share; it’s about getting dried plasma into every ambulance and into the backpack of every medic, so plasma is ready where and when it is needed most.”
