Turkey has long-sought to heal wounds in conflict zones around the world, and with a new locally-produced drug, Ankaferd BloodStopper, it will now be able to do just that. Ankaferd BloodStopper is a coagulant agent touted as Turkey’s first fully domestic medicine. The product halts bleeding in seconds and now boasts extra properties. The drug’s creators say it has also been scientifically proven to accelerate recovery from wounds and burns, as well as stopping certain cancerous tumors from spreading. Vedat Fırat, manager of And İlaç, the company behind Ankaferd, says they are ready to export the drug, citing interest from the U.S., U.K. and Russian militaries. “We are about to conclude negotiations with a number of countries, including Germany [for exports],” he told the Demirören News Agency. Fırat explained that Turkey has long been accustomed to importing the raw materials needed for pharmaceuticals and repackaging them for sale, but that the company is determined to reverse this trend. Ankaferd, in fact, came about as the result of a family company having tried to turn a traditional medicine used for generations, into something available on the market. The antihemorrhagic drug was created 12 years ago using a herbal extract which has been used in traditional medicine for centuries. Two years ago, the company received a production license from the Health Ministry and Ankaferd has since been cited in more than 300 scientific articles. Fırat claims that foreign pharmaceutical companies have sought to buy the patenting rights for the drug, offering “billions of dollars” but that they have rejected all bids. He says Ankaferd was originally licensed as a medicine to stop bleeding, but its various other properties were only later discovered. “One of those properties is the recovery of wounds and burns. One study also showed that it has the power to halt the spreading of colon cancer and send it into remission. We hope to present it to the medicine market under various brands as soon as possible,” he said. Summing up the drug’s potential in layman’s terms, Fırat explains: “Our product welds a crack on a pipe, while other similar products basically act as a cork, merely slowing down the bleeding,” he says. Hacettepe University professor, İbrahim Haznedaroğlu, who has been studying Ankaferd for a number of years, says he and other Turkish scientists decided to study the medicinal effects of the drug on gastrointestinal bleeding, having come across multiple references to the possibility of stopping such bleedings in various scientific articles. “We focused on its effect on the lower intestine and proved that when Ankaferd is introduced in cases of bleeding in colon cancer, it leads the tumors to experience programmed cell death. This means it stops cancer from spreading and makes it regress, basically confining it to one spot,” he stated.
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