Canine freeze-dried plasma could change when and where dogs get a transfusion

When a dog is bleeding and plasma is needed quickly, the nearest blood bank may be miles away.

Canine freeze-dried plasma (cFDP) became commercially available in December 2025 after an FDA review found no additional safety concerns with the product. Developed by defense technology company Mantel Technologies, cFDP is a shelf-stable powder derived from screened donor dogs that can sit at room temperature until a patient needs it, then be reconstituted with sterile water and given intravenously within minutes to control hemorrhage or treat hypovolemia.

The product does not require a freezer, thawing, or a cold chain, potentially making plasma easier to use in the field, in remote practices, and in clinics without a blood bank. See dvm360’s earlier report on the product.

To understand how the technology could be used for emergency and critical care, dvm360 spoke with Kelly A. Mann, DVM, MS, MSS, DACVR, vice president of veterinary solutions at Fort Collins, Colorado-based Mantel Technologies and affiliate faculty at Colorado State University. A retired US Army Veterinary Corps officer who once directed the LTC Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital, Mann has spent decades developing medical technologies for working dogs.

In the clip above, Mann discusses how lessons from human trauma care could inform the use of freeze-dried plasma in veterinary medicine. He describes potential uses at different stages of care, including before a patient reaches a veterinary hospital, during prolonged field care when evacuation is delayed, and after the patient arrives at a hospital. He also discusses how freeze-dried plasma could be useful in smaller clinics and satellite hospitals with limited staffing or without their own blood banks, as well as in veterinary trauma centers where it could be given while additional blood products are being arranged.

• Read the entire interview as a Q&A here.

Below is a partial transcript, which has been edited for clarity.

Mann: I believe that canine freeze-dried plasma and other products that are like it—they're vital to the provision of care in far-forward locations or under austere conditions. So our research and development objectives were driven by the need to create a species-specific freeze-dried plasma product that would retain the coagulation proteins, did not require cold chain storage, ready for immediate use, shelf-stable, and it could not be stored in glass. When you think about transport, also weight and the volume that you brought up, so weight and cube is huge. And so when you start meeting those objectives, and then you and I have been talking about the science behind the safety and efficacy of the product and things like that, then it allows you to have that close injury, and so pre-hospital care on the civilian side, point-of-injury care on the military side becomes a real consideration.

In the military working dog world, hemorrhage—it's a dangerous environment—and hemorrhage was involved in more than 80% of the non-survivors in one review of military working dog trauma. And so the need for not only canine freeze-dried plasma, but other blood products in these far-forward austere areas closer to the point of injury is very real for dogs that are in these types of operational environments, and I would extend that to law enforcement and search and rescue canines. If you think about either the dangerousness of the possibility of injury and the types of injury, as well as the austere conditions... when you think about where search and rescue dogs really work, both of those things combine to make the ability to deploy blood products without cold chain closer to the patient that requires them.

So, when you talk about the provision of far-forward care, austere environment care, things like that, my research was funded by the military, but the CFDP [canine freeze-dried plasma] product actually allows the administration of fresh frozen plasma on demand to initiate care at [the point of injury], but in the civilian world, that's also called pre-hospital care. And you're seeing that more and more on the human medical approach to trauma care, and now it's coming to fruition, in my view, in the veterinary medical systems as well. So not only is it useful very close to the point of injury in pre-hospital care, but on the military side during prolonged field care while you have delayed access to Medevac, and it can be used when you're receiving definitive in-hospital care.

I feel like these use case scenarios that we're discussing, they fit not only the military operational environment, but also into the provision of veterinary care here in the United States. A couple of examples possibly are: you have a small clinic or a satellite hospital that has reduced staffing or reduced ability to operate their own blood bank, that kind of thing, and even in level-one veterinary trauma centers, FDP [freeze-dried plasma] may be able to be used as the first unit of plasma that's administered while you're coordinating for additional plasma or other blood products and therapeutic interventions for that patient. So those are maybe a broader spectrum view of not just focusing on the austere environment, but more of a continuum of care all the way through definitive care.