Injectable synthetic blood clots stop internal bleeding by mimicking the body's natural clotting process

Good news! Very clever! Sounds a bit counter intuitive! 😊

"Scientists at MIT have developed a synthetic system that can stem internal bleeding, to help more people survive long enough to reach a hospital after a traumatic injury. Two components come together at the wound to form a clot, without doing so elsewhere in the body where it might be dangerous. ...
The MIT team has now developed a synthetic system that could be injected by first responders to stem internal bleeding. It does so using nanoparticles and polymers that work to boost the formation of natural blood clots. ...

The new system is made up of two major components – nanoparticles that recruit platelets, and a polymer that mimics fibrinogen. The nanoparticles are made of a biocompatible material called PEG-PLGA, and have a peptide that helps them bind to activated platelets. This means that they accumulate where there are higher concentrations of platelets, such as wounds, and work to draw even more to the area. ... Importantly, the team also created a crosslinker system, with a chemical group on the nanoparticles that binds to a tag on the fibrinogen-mimicking protein. This helps the two components in the synthetic clotting system find each other at the site of a wound and plug it up more efficiently. ..."

From the abstract:

"Primary hemostasis (platelet plug formation) and secondary hemostasis (fibrin clot formation) are intertwined processes that occur upon vascular injury. Researchers have sought to target wounds by leveraging cues specific to these processes, such as using peptides that bind activated platelets or fibrin. While these materials have shown success in various injury models, they are commonly designed for the purpose of treating solely primary or secondary hemostasis. In this work, a two-component system consisting of a targeting component (azide/GRGDS PEG-PLGA nanoparticles) and a crosslinking component (multifunctional DBCO) is developed to treat internal bleeding. The system leverages increased injury accumulation to achieve crosslinking above a critical concentration, addressing both primary and secondary hemostasis by amplifying platelet recruitment and mitigating plasminolysis for greater clot stability. Nanoparticle aggregation is measured to validate concentration-dependent crosslinking, while a 1:3 azide/GRGDS ratio is found to increase platelet recruitment, decrease clot degradation in hemodiluted environments, and decrease complement activation. Finally, this approach significantly increases survival relative to the particle-only control in a liver resection model. In light of prior successes with the particle-only system, these results emphasize the potential of this technology in aiding hemostasis and the importance of a holistic approach in engineering new treatments for hemorrhage."

Injectable synthetic blood clots stop internal bleeding to save lives

Two-component system could offer a new way to halt internal bleeding The technology, which mimics the body’s natural clotting process, could help keep severely injured people alive until they are treated at a hospital.

Engineering a Two-Component Hemostat for the Treatment of Internal Bleeding through Wound-Targeted Crosslinking (open access)

Scheme 1 Two-component system designed for wound-targeted crosslinking