Miniature Model to Study Human Wound Healing

Screenshot from video showing blood cells streaming through a "wound" and a clot forming. The red-stained cells are actually white blood cells. A green extracellular glue can be seen at the top of the wound; this is fibrin, which holds the clot together. Credit: Yumiko Sakurai, Emory/Georgia Tech. 

Study in a Sentence: Biomedical engineers recently created a miniature device composed of blood vessels, a valve that induces a “wound,” and the flow of blood to recapitulate the wound healing process seen during injury in humans. They used the human-based system to understand the role of several key clotting factors for blood clot formation.

Healthy for Humans: The system helped the scientists to determine the defects causing excessive bleeding in hemophila A patients as well as to assess the specific effects of blood clotting drugs. Thus, the model can be used as a screening tool for drugs to modulate human wound healing, a diagnostic tool to identify patients with bleeding disorders, and a personalized medicine tool to determine the optimal individualized drug treatments to modulate clotting. 

Redefining Research: Unlike previous models which only simulate one aspect of the wound healing process, this system reproduce all components of the human small blood vessel injury and repair process.