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Blood runs through every human body. And yet there’s still not enough of it. For one, not enough people are donating it. But it’s also really hard to store, and it takes very special conditions to keep it healthy.

But there’s a potential solution: an artificial version that wouldn’t need to be treated quite as gently or refrigerated. The Department of Defense recently granted $46 million to the group responsible for the development of a synthetic blood called ErythroMer.

“If this synthetic blood substitute works, it could be absolutely game-changing because it can be freeze-dried, it can be reconstituted on demand, and it’s universal,” journalist Nicola Twilley s

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