Doctor Will Use Royalty Proceeds to Establish Traffic Safety Programs : MEDICAL

Dr. Edward Shanbrom of North Tustin recently signed a royalty agreement involving a blood-cleaning process that is being marketed as a means to prevent hemophiliacs’ contracting diseases such as AIDS or hepatitis.

Shanbrom is planning to use most of the royalties, which he estimates will run into “tens of thousands of dollars” annually, to fight another killer: traffic accidents.

Shanbrom is establishing a fellowship and annual award program through the UC Irvine Institute of Transportation Studies in memory of his son David Lee Shanbrom, 26, who died in a collision with a trailer truck two years ago on the Foothill Freeway.

Shanbrom said his son’s death plunged him into a deep depression from which he is just now emerging, in part because of the possibility that profits from his royalty agreement will help to prevent traffic accidents.

In May, Shanbrom said, he signed a contract with the New York Blood Center, a large nonprofit blood bank and research organization. The contract will allow him to share in revenue the center generates from licensing arrangements with makers of blood-clotting agents who use a sterilization process that Shanbrom helped develop.

Shanbrom said he discovered in the early 1980s that viruses could be removed from blood plasma with a detergent that is later filtered out. The New York Blood Center, which did similar research on the use of solvents and detergents to clean blood, bought Shanbrom’s patent rights.

Manufacturers of blood-clotting agents administered to hemophiliacs through transfusions are using the sterilization process to eliminate blood-borne viruses that might be present in blood plasma collected from donors.

Wilfred Recker, director of the transportation studies institute, said the royalty money to be donated by Shanbrom and his wife, Helen, will pay for at least one fellowship a year for graduate students to research traffic safety.

In addition, Recker said, the Shanbroms want to provide an annual cash award to “anyone in public or private life who does something” notable to promote transportation safety.