The organism in question is known as the “horseshoe crabs”, a type of marine crustacean whose blue blood is a vital liquid for pharmaceutical companies, as it contains a special type of immune cell.
These cells are used in vaccine production tests, while they played an important role in the production of anti-Coronavirus vaccines currently available worldwide.
But the over-reliance on these cells put the horseshoe cancer at risk of extinction, according to a report by the American newspaper “Washington Post”.
This type of crustacean lives about 450 million years ago, and has escaped extinction several times, as it passed through many ice ages in peace.
“The entire supply chain for drug testing depends on a vulnerable, or near-extinct marine creature,” Kevin Williams, a scientist working on artificial immune cells similar to those found in cancer, told The Washington Post.
Scientists drain the blood of these creatures and then return them to the ocean, but then most of them die.
Environmentalists fear that the Atlantic horseshoe crab will follow the path of its Asian counterpart, which is already extinct in Taiwan and is disappearing in Hong Kong due to an overreliance on biomedical tests.
Pharmaceutical companies in Europe and Asia have switched to using a synthetic version of the immune cells produced by cancer, but many US companies are still draining the creature in laboratories.
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