SYDNEY, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Researchers from Australia and China have developed an artery-on-a-chip that replicates patient-specific blood vessel structure and blood flow dynamics to help predict stroke risk.
The study, published in the journal Cell Biomaterials, describes the device as a "physical twin" and suggests that the shape of blood vessels and local blood flow disturbances may be more important determinants of stroke risk than blood vessel narrowing alone, according to a summary of the study on the Australian Science Media Center website on Friday.
"We hope these tools will allow us to study drugs aimed at reducing the risk of stroke and to eventually provide personalized treatments for each patient based on their anatomy," said the study's first author Zhao Yunduo at Australia's University of Sydney.
To test the platform, researchers reconstructed carotid arteries from six patients with different degrees of disease and used computational fluid dynamics to model blood flow, revealing marked differences in local blood flow despite similar levels of artery narrowing.
After using a laser to create a small injury in the underlying collagen, they also noticed blood clotting differently depending on the artery's shape. The team is now recruiting stroke patients for a clinical trial. ■
