Swansea University researchers have received £1.2 million in funding to develop a new test aimed at improving stroke care. The project is an international collaboration involving the Welsh Centre for Emergency Medicine Research at Morriston Hospital, Swansea University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The three-year study will use rheology, which examines how materials flow and deform, to track blood clot breakdown more precisely than current methods allow. The work is supported by the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Engineering Council (EPSRC).
Professor Karl Hawkins from Swansea University Medical School leads the project. He explained: “A blood clot will form to perform a haemostatic function, to stop bleeding.
“And then, eventually, the body will dissolve it. That process is called fibrinolysis. However, at the moment there is no accurate or precise technique to quantify this process.
“This is where rheology comes in. It allows us to pinpoint the exact moment a clot breaks down by identifying when it stops performing its haemostatic function.
“The technique has particular relevance for stroke patients. Stroke is caused as a result of a blood clot in the arteries that supply the brain.
“The treatment involves breaking down these clots by administering clot-busting drugs and this is called thrombolytic therapy.
“However, thrombolytics can have serious side effects, such as bleeding, which can be catastrophic. Currently, there is limited guidance and no biomarker to determine the appropriate type and dose of thrombolytic a patient should receive. That’s where this technique comes in.”
The team at Swansea University aims to develop a biomarker that measures how clots break down in the body. When combined with existing biomarkers for clot formation, this could provide clinicians with tools to measure all stages of a blood clot's lifecycle.
Dr Suresh Pillai, Director of WCEMR and senior lecturer in emergency medicine at Swansea University, noted that national guidelines recommend administering clot-busting drugs within four and a half hours after stroke symptoms begin. He added: “They are expensive at around £600 a time. But if someone has a debilitating stroke with full-side weakness, you can see how much impact that will have on the NHS, on families – but, more importantly, on the patient’s quality of life.
“The recommended dose is weight adjusted, but everyone is different. We don’t know if we are over-dosing or under-dosing. We have no biomarker to measure that.
“So, if this test works, it would be groundbreaking. It would have a huge impact on how we manage patients.”
In its first phase, the project will refine this new biomarker using expertise from Dr Dan Curtis and Dr Francesco Del Giudice from Swansea University's Complex Fluids Research Group alongside Professor Gareth McKinley from MIT. Initial tests will use samples from healthy volunteers before moving on to samples from stroke patients treated at Morriston Hospital.
The goal is to create one test capable of predicting how well various drugs work for individual patients—a development that could also support pharmaceutical companies working on improved medicines.