Australian researchers have developed an “artery-on-a-chip” platform that replicates a patient’s vascular structure and blood flow dynamics, with the aim of helping predict ischaemic stroke risks.
In a study published in Cell Biomaterials, the researchers described the “physical twin” platform, which is designed to model thrombosis embolisation – where a blood clot detaches from the site where it formed and travels through the bloodstream before lodging in another blood vessel.
Author Professor Lining Arnold Ju of the University of Sydney said thrombosis embolisation was highly patient-specific, making stroke risk difficult to predict using conventional approaches.
“This idea was born out of a critical clinical gap – we know that even patients at ‘low risk’ can suffer from severe or fatal strokes. We wanted to find a better way to predict this risk,” Prof Ju said.
He said ischemic strokes occur when a blood vessel supplying the brain is blocked, usually by a clot or fatty plaque.
When vital blood and oxygen is cut off, brain cells die within minutes and for this reason, it was important to find new ways to predict which patients were highest risk in order for better interventions to be developed.
“Our work recreates precise, patient-specific carotid artery geometries,” Prof Ju said, adding that the physical twin also uses cells that more closely mimic the dynamics of blood flow in these structures.
The researchers reconstructed carotid arteries from six patients with varying degrees of disease.
They used computational fluid dynamics to calculate how blood flowed through each artery, revealing substantial differences in local blood flow despite similar levels of narrowing.
After using a laser to create a small injury in the underlying collagen, they also observed strikingly different clotting behaviors depending on the artery’s shape.
First author Yunduo Charles Zhao from the Heart Research Institute in Newtown said the findings suggested that three-dimensional vascular shape and local flow disturbances “matter far more than simple narrowing.”
Mr Zhao said he was motivated to shift his research toward predictive stroke diagnosis during his PhD, when his grandmother passed away from stroke.
“We hope these tools will allow us to study drugs aimed at reducing the risk of stroke and to eventually provide personalised treatments for each patient based on their anatomy.”
The team is currently recruiting stroke patients for a clinical trial to evaluate how the technology can directly benefit underserved stroke patients, noting the technology also had the potential to study other cardiovascular conditions – including peripheral artery disease, deep-vein thrombosis and aneurisms.
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