While studying at Columbia University, Dr. Drew wrote his dissertation on “Banked Blood.” It was about the technique he had discovered to preserve blood plasma for a long time. Before his discoveries, blood was unable to be stored for more than two days because of the fast decomposition of cells. To preserve blood for a week, Dr. Drew had to separate the whole blood from the plasma and refrigerate the components separately. When a transfusion of blood needed to be made he would combine the whole blood and the plasma. Dr. Drew learned that a whole blood transfusion could not be performed because of blood types; however, he found out that everyone has the same plasma. In some cases, only plasma transfusions were performed according to patients needs.
To complete his dissertation, he opened a blood bank at Presbyterian Hospital with the help of Dr. John Scudder. In 1940, Drew became the first African American doctor to be awarded with a Doctor of Science Medical degree from Columbia University. He was given the position of director of the first American Red Cross Plasma Bank. His job was to oversee the collection of blood of the armed forces. The production of dry plasma was the primary life saving agent during World War II. After earning his Ph.D. he traveled to England to start the first blood bank there. Dr. Drew and his team were able to collect blood from about 15,000 donors and perform 1,500 transfusions.
In 1941, Drew became the head of the first mobile unit for blood collection in New York. However, blood was not available for patients when it was needed. Even if there were donors available to give blood, they might not have the right blood type needed. The health centers started to advertise to get blood donors in the streets of New York, paying the homeless $50 per donation. There was the risk of getting contaminated blood from donors and there was a problem to store the blood. Doctors were forced to discard blood that went unused. The National Blood Plasma Project was running smoothly and no longer needed him, so Dr. Drew resigned from the Red Cross in 1941. He returned home to his wife and his job at Howard University in Alabama and became Chief of Surgery there. He became an examiner of the American Board of Surgery, the first “black” surgeon in this position.