THE

IMPORTANCE
OF HORSESHOE
CRAB BLOOD
Austin Cheng

1 WHAT IS LAL?
LAL stands for Limulus amoebocyte lysate.
LAL is an extract of horseshoe crab blood.
LAL clots around any bacteria present. This
obviously helps horseshoe crabs protect
themselves from viruses and diseases.

2 HOW IS IT USED IN MEDICINE?

LAL testing was invented by Fred Bang, a medical researcher
in 1956 and was approved by the FDA for use in 1977. LAL is
used to test all medicines that are injected into the human
body. Even many medical devices need to undergo the LAL
test. A small amount of LAL is put into a sample of a batch of
medicine and if it clots, it will be known that the medicine is
unsafe for human use. Before LAL, medicine was tested by
injecting medicines into rabbits and see their response, which
is obviously very inhumane , costly, and slow.

LAL'S STEEP PRICE

3

During the race to create a vaccine for Covid-19, many journalist,

activists, and conservationist have been worried about the effect on the
population of horseshoe crabs due to the use of LAL in all vaccines.
These concerns were put to rest by manufacturers of LAL, citing the fact
that only a small amount of LAL is needed for an entire batch of the
vaccine which could include millions of doses. Although, horseshoe crabs
have been over harvested in the past, which evoked a series of laws
across the U.S. on the harvesting of horseshoe crabs. The population of
horseshoe crabs is in danger although it is unlikely that came from
medical use, it still is very much in danger. It was classified as a
vulnerable species, just under endangered, by the International Union
for the Conservation of Nature in 2016.

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