Scientists say new ‘artery on a chip’ could predict stroke risk

By Stephen Beech

A new "artery-on-a-chip" tool can accurately predict the risk of a stroke.

The device — developed by scientists in Australia — replicates in detail a patient's specific vascular structure and blood flow dynamics, called a "physical twin."

Doctors explained that predicting someone's risk of suffering an ischemic stroke is difficult because thrombosis embolization — the process of a blood clot detaching from the area where it formed and traveling to and then sticking in another blood vessel — is based on factors that are unique to each person.

But the new tool, described in the journal Cell Biomaterials, gets around that challenge.

Study author Lining Ju said: "This idea was born out of a critical clinical gap.

"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."

Ischemic strokes happen when a blood vessel supplying the brain is blocked, usually by a clot or fatty plaque.

When vital blood and oxygen are cut off, brain cells die within minutes.

More from this section

A guide to medication formularies: Understanding your prescription coverage

I’m a Philly neonatologist, and every time I discharge a baby from the NICU, I worry about the air they’ll breathe at home

Scientists say new ‘artery on a chip’ could predict stroke risk

Ju, from the University of Sydney, said that's why it's important to find new ways to predict who is at highest risk so that better interventions can be developed.

He added: "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 research team 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 behaviors depending on the artery's shape.

Study first author Yunduo Charles Zhao, of the Heart Research Institute, Australia, said: "Our findings suggested that three-dimensional vascular shape and local flow disturbances matter far more than simple narrowing."

Zhao, who was motivated to shift his research toward predictive stroke diagnosis during his Ph.D. when his grandmother died from a stroke, added: "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."

The research team is now recruiting stroke patients for a clinical trial to evaluate how the technology can directly benefit underserved stroke patients.

They say the technology also has the potential to study other cardiovascular conditions, including peripheral artery disease, deep-vein thrombosis and aneurysms.