杏吧视频 bioengineer awarded $2.5 million from U.S. Army to boost nanotechnology for treating wounded soldiers and patients with bleeding defects
The research arm of the U.S. Army has awarded 杏吧视频 a four-year, $2.5 million grant to advance and optimize his latest nanotechnology to stop bleeding from battlefield injuries.
The new technology devised by Sen Gupta and his team is called 鈥淪anguiStop.鈥 It allows a clot-promoting enzyme called thrombin to be intravenously delivered in a targeted manner to a bleeding area鈥攅specially to the site of internal injuries.
Once there, the thrombin makes a specialized protein called fibrin鈥攖he body鈥檚 mesh-like substance critical to stanching the bleeding.
The technology could be especially helpful to treat soldiers who suffer from severe battlefield wounds, as well as patients who may have genetic or drug-induced defects in blood coagulation.
鈥淭hink of it like having concrete in place to build a dam and reduce flooding (in this case bleeding)鈥攂ut you鈥檝e got to deliver the concrete only where it鈥檚 needed, not everywhere in the bloodstream,鈥 said Sen Gupta, the Leonard Case Jr. Professor of Engineering at the Case School of Engineering. 鈥淎nd that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e working on鈥攗sing targeted phospholipid nanoparticles to get the thrombin where it needs to go.鈥
Phospholipids are important building blocks for the structure and function of living cells. They can also be assembled into nanoparticles 100-200 nanometers in size.
In this case, Sen Gupta and team made phospholipid nanoparticles with 鈥渉oming molecules鈥 on their surface that target them specifically to the injury site, once introduced into the bloodstream.
The new U.S. Army research funding will enable Sen Gupta and his team over the next four years to 鈥渕ake this technology reproducible, to optimize the dosage and confirm toxicity limits and immune risks,鈥 he said.
New nanoparticle technology
When there is a bleeding injury, the human body naturally produces thrombin at high concentrations, specifically at the injury site. That process then aids in locally creating fibrin and coagulating blood.
This 鈥渢hrombin burst鈥 occurs via rapid reactions involving unique molecules in the blood called coagulation factors that assemble on the surface of clot-promoting blood cells, called platelets, gathering at the injury site.
However, the body鈥檚 natural ability to make thrombin at the injury site is compromised for soldiers who have suffered severe blood loss or in patients who have blood defects, affecting fibrin formation at the site, Sen Gupta said.
Further, thrombin cannot be intravenously administered to the body to treat this problem because it would cause 鈥渋ndiscriminate clotting all over,鈥 Sen Gupta said.
鈥淪o, instead, we have packaged thrombin within a nanoparticle carrier that specifically targets to the bleeding site and then releases the thrombin at the site to make fibrin where needed,鈥 he said.
Sen Gupta and collaborators had been exploring this approach since the past year, he said. A , a journal of the American Chemical Society, showed how it could be successful.
Focused on stopping the bleeding
Sen Gupta has partnered with collaborators for the last decade to advance cutting-edge research in synthetic blood surrogates, focusing especially .
They also work on therapeutic technologies for hemostasis (stopping bleeding), thrombolysis (breaking harmful blood clots) and inflammation (numerous blood cell-related pathologies).
They have also and other blood conditions in the battlefield.
In 2016, he also co-founded , a biotechnology company focused on bleeding-control technologies.
For more information, contact Mike Scott at mike.scott@case.edu.
This article was originally published Aug. 30, 2022.
