Improved Synthetic Blood Platelets Spur Clotting

Present work on artificial blood tends to focus on narrow areas of functionality in which short-term augmentation of the capabilities of natural blood are useful, such as oxygen transport and clotting. From these diverse paths a wholly artificial blood substitute will no doubt eventually arise, but bear in mind that this line of development faces stiff competition from the use of cell technologies to produce biological blood as needed. One way or another blood donation will be a thing of the past not so many years from now: An additive nanoparticle manufacturing process has been used to design and realize a synthetic platelet for the first time. The platelets are "super mimics", matching the natural shape, size, flexibility, and surface biochemistry of real platelets unlike prior incarnations that match only one or two qualities. The synthetic plates are made by a layer-wise build-up of synthetic polymers and biological proteins, some of which include polystyrene, polyallylamine hydrochloride, and bovine serum protein (a generic protein). The surfaces are conjugated to natural clotting factors such as von Willebrand Factor binding peptide, and fibrinogen-mimetic peptide. The new nanoparticle-derived synthetic platelets have a natural, flexible "discoid" shape rather than a rigid spherical shape that overcame the margination problem. Nanoparticles have been developed previously for solving the same challenges but thus far have been hampered by deficiencies such as poor circu...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs