FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. — The fight against coronavirus has an unusual ally -- horseshoe crabs.
The animals are helping researchers develop a vaccine against the virus.
"They’ve been around for 450 million years or something like that," Dr. Mark Martindale said. He is the director at the University of Florida Whitney Marine Lab in Marineland.
"All substances that enter or make contact with human blood have to be tested by the FDA, to make sure they’re not bringing any type of contaminants into the human body," Martindales explained.
That’s where the horseshoe crab comes in, specifically its blood. The blood from the animal is blue.
In pharmaceutical labs around the world, that blue blood is extracted from the horseshoe crabs. Certain parts of the animal’s blood can actually detect toxins that can harm humans. Many kinds of medical treatments are tested with compounds from horseshoe crab blood.
"This happens every single day," Martindale said, "for every single blood transfusion, every single vaccine we get. If it passes the test, the FDA approves it for use in human subjects."
Horseshoe crab blood is being used to test the safety of potential COVID-19 vaccines.
"So before any coronavirus vaccine would be FDA approved for clinical use in human beings, it would have to be tested with this horseshoe crab test to make sure it was safe to inject into the human body," Martindale explained.
He noted that half a million horseshoe crabs are collected every year for their blood. Some of the blood is removed and then the animals are returned to the wild. But not all of them survive.
"It’s a bit of a worry because horseshoe crab populations have been declining over the decades," Martindale said.
Horseshoe crab blood is not being withdrawn at the UF Whitney Marine Lab, however, they are being studied for other purposes there.
Projects are underway to synthetically generate the same kind of compounds that these prehistoric-looking creatures figured out how to make millions of years ago.
RELATED: Fla. mayor behind bringing RNC to Jacksonville amid coronavirus pandemic is in self-quarantine