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Halting Life-Threatening Blood Loss

Image: Sen Gupta Lab
The above fluorescence image of a blood clot shows the fibrin mesh in green.
The pink and red areas are artificial platelets that bind with natural platelets to help stop bleeding.

“This is the next step in artificial-platelet technology, and it’s truly a critical advance,” said Anirban Sen Gupta, PhD, a biomedical engineering professor at Case Western Reserve University, about his latest innovation to reduce blood loss from traumatic injuries.

The new development in his team’s decade of pioneering research involves the creation of platelet-mimicking nanoparticles that help generate a mesh made of fibrin, an insoluble protein. This mesh along with platelets—whether natural or artificial—serves to stabilize the clot that stops blood loss.