Editor´s choice articles 2008–2009

and fibrinolysis factors Patients with severe haemophilia A or B are at high risk of recurrent bleeding and require treatment with procoagulant fac-tors, such as factor VIIa or factor IX. Unfor-tunately, the half-life of the recombinant forms of these proteins is rather short (2–3 hours). The generation of genetically fused constructs with albumin, as reported by Weimer et al. (1) and Metzner et al. (2), not only prolongs the half-life of the coagu-lation proteins in animal models, but they also express biological activity comparable to the unmodified counterparts or to pro-teins chemically modified by poly-ethy