Research Support
SPIRITS

Clarification of Thermo-physics of Blood Flow, Blood Vessel and Thrombus using Micro-fluidic Platform to Establish the Bio-thermal Engineering

Project Gist

A new approach in the analysis of thermal flow phenomena in bio-medical systems by applying engineering perspectives

Keywords

Blood flow, Thrombus, Thermal physical properties, microfluidic platform

Background and Purpose

Venous thromboembolism can lead to serious symptoms as deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, which is known as “economy syndrome”. Venous thrombus formation and fibrinolysis occur under gentle flow conditions and is affected by various external and internal factors: flow, shear stress, mass transfer and temperature. The system and process of the thrombus formation are, thus, complicated and the detail mechanism is not understood yet. In the present work, microfluidics is applied to generate thrombus in artificial veins and conduct a high resolution measurement of the formation process to understand the thrombus characteristics. Effects of various conditions including the temperature on the thrombus formation is systematically studied to provide new insights to the fields of clinics and preemptive medicine.

Project Achievements

A group of scientist, engineer and medical doctors was formed to conduct a multidisciplinary study on the venous thrombus formation. The formation process and the major factors affecting the thrombus generation were studied in detail by applying microfluidic platform technology. Further, international collaborations with colleagues of the universities in the Netherlands, India and Poland were established. This successfully led to a better understanding of the physics in the blood flow and thrombus formation from wider and different perspectives. Further, the young members of the project were able to experience the leader skills required to establish such multidisciplinary and international projects, and the project supported them to join greater projects.

Future Prospects

A new microchannel will be developed to measure the physics and thermal properties of the venous thrombus formation in single cell level. The effect of the thrombus formation in stent placement and drug delivery system applied to the fields of clinic and applications will be investigated by extending the international collaboration established through the SPIRITS project.

Figure

Measurement of thrombus formation process and its thermal properties using microfluidic platform.
Photograph of the seminar held in TU Delft.

Principal Investigator

TATSUMI Kazuya

・TATSUMI Kazuya
・Faculty of Engineering
・He is working on micro-transport phenomena in microfluidics – a technique which handles micro-nano flow rate in microchannels – to understand the physical characteristics of thermal, mass and cell transport phenomena in microchannel flows and develop advance technologies to control and enhance the transport properties with extremely high accuracy. These technologies are applied to sensors, reaction control, cell sorting and screening techniques that are used in the fields of heat transfer, biology, medicine and chemistry.
http://mtfm.me.kyoto-u.ac.jp/