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Platelets are one of the most vital parts of the human circulatory system. These cell fragments help blood clot. Any person who has even gotten a cut or more serious injury knows how important that is.
Unfortunately, donated platelets are hard to come by. That is why the news from a new study in Science Translational Medicine showing that scientists have succeeded in making synthetic platelets is so exciting.
A shelf life of a week
Donated platelets are worth their weight in gold. Unfortunately, they are often as rare as gold, but not because people are reluctant to donate. Wired reports that platelets will only last outside of a human body a week, at most, even when refrigerated.
This is in contrast to blood donations, which can last for about a month. This means that rural hospitals don’t often store platelets and they cannot be shipped from one place to the other like blood can.
This is what led the team of researchers from North Carolina State University to embark on the long and arduous journey to create synthetic platelets. In April of 2024 they announced, in the study, that the artificial platelets they had created had proven successful in promoting clotting in animal trials.
Nanoparticles and fibrin
So how does it work? The researchers used a hydrogel to create nanoparticles that mimic the size and shape of platelets. They then used an antibody fragment that binds to fibrin, a protein that helps platelets form clots, and covered the nanoparticles in that antibody.
According to GEN News, the artificial platelets had to serve two purposes. The first is to recognize and travel to the site of the bleeding, and the second is to be able to stack and form a plug to stop the bleeding. The platelets created by the North Carolina team were able to do both.
“You have to get the surface decoration of these particles just right. You need to make them look like platelets and make them behave the way platelets do,” Dr. Matthew Neal, a trauma and general surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical center told Wired.
These platelets, according to Wired, could be freeze dried and rehydrated making them much more sturdy and practical than regular platelets. They theoretically could be used in ambulances, on the battlefield, or very remote locations.
Another potential use for these synthetic platelets is in cancer treatment. Chemotherapy depletes a huge amount of platelets, and patients often develop antibodies against transfused human platelets, making this a huge problem for cancer patients. The hope is that these artificial platelets could be a work-around.
Though the animal testing proved successful there are still a few years to go before human trials get off the ground and for the potential life-saving artificial platelets to be approved for use in people. Still, this is very good news for the future of medicine.
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