It’s not a chemical compound, the active component is an amebocyte. Same reason we can’t just make red blood cells and need other humans to donate them.
There have been other attempts at making synthetic coagulants without broad success. The thing that seems to be the most effective at minimizing the horseshoe crab burden is using machines to do the detection and cut down on the amount of LAL needed vs running the test visually.
prayer@lemmy.world 7 months ago
My guess without checking would be regulatory. The FDA doesn’t want to approve an alternative to an already working method unless it can be shown to truly be an alternative. That testing is lengthy and expensive.