Diagnostic tool may minimize blood clotting disorders

The vascular endothelium, the lining of blood vessels, is a major part of many diseases including stroke, diabetes and heart disease. When dysfunctional, these cells can result in blood clots, causing blockages and hemorrhages. But a new diagnostic tool may help doctors better monitor blood coagulation.

The interface between endothelial cells and circulating blood has not been accurately replicated in a practical diagnostic device, due to the difficulty of dealing with living endothelial cells. But researchers, led by Donald Ingber, MD, PhD, founding diretor of the Wyss Institute and a professor of vascular biology at Harvard Medical School, has discovered that endothelial cells need not be "living" in order to confer their effects on blood coagulation.

A new tool developed by the team could monitor blood clot formation and diagnose effectiveness of anti-platelet therappy.

"Abnormal blood coagulation and platelet activation are major medical problems and the ways we study them now are overly simplified," said Ingber. "Clinicians currently do not have tools to monitor hemostasis that take into account physiologically-important interactions between endothelial cells and flowing blood."

The researchers' work was published in the August edition of Biomedical Microdevices,

"Our efforts to mimic the vascular system in a meaningful way within a microfluidic device has led to two avenues of technology development, which could potentially be combined in the future to develop portable tools suited for diagnosing and even discovering what disease states lead to blood clotting," said Ingber. "Together they represent a new suite of physiologically-relevant microdevices that incorporate critical mechanical cues, and which could have near-term impact on our understanding and prevention of dysfunctional hemostasis."