The analysis arm of the U. S. Military has awarded Case Western Reserve College blood surrogate pioneer Anirban Sen Gupta a four-year, $2.5 million grant to advance and optimize his newest nanotechnology to cease bleeding from battlefield accidents.
Sen Gupta and his workforce devised the brand new know-how known as “SanguiStop.” It permits a clot-promoting enzyme known as thrombin to be intravenously delivered in a focused method to a bleeding space—particularly to the positioning of inside accidents.
As soon as there, the thrombin makes a specialised protein known as fibrin—the physique’s mesh-like substance essential to stanching the bleeding.
The know-how might be particularly useful to deal with troopers that suffer from extreme battlefield wounds and sufferers who might have genetic or drug-induced defects in blood coagulation.
“Consider it like having concrete in place to construct a dam and cut back flooding (on this case bleeding)–however you’ve bought to ship the concrete solely the place it’s wanted, not in all places within the bloodstream,” mentioned Sen Gupta, the Leonard Case Jr. Professor of Engineering on the Case Faculty of Engineering. “And that’s what we’re engaged on—utilizing focused phospholipid nanoparticles to get the thrombin the place it must go.”
Phospholipids are necessary constructing blocks for the construction and performance of residing cells. They will also be assembled into nanoparticles 100-200 nanometers in measurement.
On this case, Sen Gupta and workforce made phospholipid nanoparticles with “homing molecules” on their floor that focus on them particularly to the damage web site, as soon as launched into the bloodstream.
The brand new U.S. Military analysis funding will allow Sen Gupta and his workforce over the following 4 years to “make this know-how reproducible, to optimize the dosage and make sure toxicity limits and immune dangers,” he mentioned.
New nanoparticle know-how
When there’s a bleeding damage, the human physique naturally produces thrombin at excessive concentrations, particularly on the damage web site. That course of then aids in regionally creating fibrin and coagulating blood.
This “thrombin burst” happens through fast reactions involving distinctive molecules within the blood known as coagulation elements that assemble on the floor of clot-promoting blood cells, known as platelets, gathering on the damage web site.
Nonetheless, the physique’s pure potential to make thrombin on the damage web site is compromised for troopers who’ve suffered extreme blood loss or in sufferers who’ve blood defects, affecting fibrin formation on the web site, Sen Gupta mentioned.
Additional, thrombin can’t be intravenously administered to the physique to deal with this downside as a result of it might trigger “indiscriminate clotting throughout,” Sen Gupta mentioned.
“So, as an alternative, we’ve packaged thrombin inside a nanoparticle provider that particularly targets to the bleeding web site after which releases the thrombin on the web site to make fibrin the place wanted,” he mentioned.
Sen Gupta and collaborators had been exploring this strategy because the previous 12 months, he mentioned. A feasibility study published recently in ACS Nano, a journal of the American Chemical Society, confirmed the way it might be profitable.
Targeted on stopping the bleeding
Sen Gupta has partnered with collaborators for the final decade to advance cutting-edge analysis in artificial blood surrogates, focusing particularly on developing artificial platelet systems.
Additionally they work on therapeutic applied sciences for hemostasis (stopping bleeding), thrombolysis (breaking dangerous blood clots) and irritation (quite a few blood cell-related pathologies).
They’ve additionally developed a hand-held medical device to quickly assess a wounded soldier’s critical clotting issues and different blood situations within the battlefield.
In 2016, he additionally co-founded Haima Therapeutics, a biotechnology firm targeted on bleeding-control applied sciences.
Supply: Case Western Reserve University
