Blood vessel-like coating could make medical devices safer for patients

College of B.C. researchers have developed a coating that would make medical units safer for tens of millions of sufferers, decreasing the dangers related to blood clots and harmful bleeding. The work has been revealed in Nature Supplies.

The brand new materials, designed to imitate the pure habits of blood vessels, might enable for safer use of blood-contacting units like catheters, stents, blood-oxygenation machines and dialysis machines—particularly in instances the place blood clots are a major concern.

“This discovery could possibly be a transformative step within the improvement of safer medical units,” stated Dr. Jayachandran Kizhakkedathu, a professor of pathology and laboratory medication and Tier 1 Canada Analysis Chair in Immunomodulation Supplies and Immunotherapy who led the research out of the Middle for Blood Analysis at UBC.

“By designing a coating that mimics the physique’s pure method to stopping clots, we have created an answer that would dramatically scale back the necessity for dangerous blood thinners earlier than and after sufferers use these units.”

Thrombosis, or clot formation, is a significant problem when blood-contacting units are used. Not like pure blood vessels, these units can set off clotting by activating particular proteins within the blood. Blood clots can impede the machine, disrupting therapy, or result in extreme issues equivalent to stroke and coronary heart assault.

Docs typically prescribe excessive doses of blood thinners to forestall clots on these units, however this method will increase the chance of harmful bleeding—a trade-off that many sufferers and clinicians would relatively keep away from.

The newly developed coating affords a promising various. It is engineered to mimic how blood vessels operate—encouraging regular blood movement with out triggering clot formation. Think about the coating as a “smooth barrier” on a tool that pulls a key blood protein however retains it from activating the clotting course of.

“By interacting with this protein in a managed method, the coating prevents it from sparking a cascade of occasions that result in clot formation,” stated Dr. Haifeng Ji, a Michael Smith Well being Analysis BC postdoctoral fellow on the Middle for Blood Analysis and first creator of the research.

In lab and animal research, the coating demonstrated important reductions in clot formation on machine surfaces, with out using blood thinners and with out affecting the conventional clotting features elsewhere within the physique.

“Probably the most shocking insights was that controlling the interplay between the coating and particular blood proteins might forestall clotting with out disrupting the physique’s pure stability,” Dr. Kizhakkedathu stated. “This exhibits us that mimicking the physique’s personal mechanisms, relatively than merely repelling blood parts, is essential to actually biocompatible machine design.”

The innovation comes as demand for blood-contacting units continues to rise. Within the U.S. alone, tens of millions of vascular catheters are positioned annually, and a whole bunch of hundreds of sufferers rely upon units like dialysis machines to keep up their well being.

Wanting forward, the analysis crew plans to discover how this progressive coating could possibly be additional optimized and utilized to a broader vary of blood-contacting units. Key questions stay about how the coating interacts with different blood proteins and cells, and whether or not the coating interacts with coagulation proteins by way of single-layer or multi-layer designs.

Moreover, the crew is involved in understanding whether or not this method might finally be tailored to deal with different blood-related issues, equivalent to irritation or an infection, in long-term medical implants.

By delving deeper into the organic mechanisms that make this coating so efficient, future research might pave the way in which for a brand new technology of medical units that not solely forestall clotting however combine seamlessly with the physique’s pure processes.