Researchers have developed a tool intended to circumvent the challenge of predicting ischaemic stroke risks in individuals with carotid artery disease: an ‘artery-on-a-chip’ platform that can replicate a patient’s specific vascular structure and blood flow dynamics via a ‘physical twin’. Their experimental study findings were published recently in Cell Biomaterials.
“This idea was born out of a critical clinical gap,” said study author Lining Arnold Ju (University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia). “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. Our work recreates precise, patient-specific carotid artery geometries. 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 behaviours depending on the artery’s shape.
“Our findings suggested that three-dimensional vascular shape and local flow disturbances matter far more than simple narrowing,” commented first author Yunduo Charles Zhao (Heart Research Institute, Newtown, Australia). “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 behind this research is currently recruiting stroke patients for a clinical trial to evaluate how their technology can directly benefit underserved stroke patients—and they note that the technology also has potential within the study of other cardiovascular conditions, including peripheral arterial disease, deep-vein thrombosis, and aneurysms.
