Thrombosis and its Resolution: Mechanisms and Imaging
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Thrombosis and its Resolution: Mechanisms and Imaging
IRAS ID
713
Contact name
Prakash Saha
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
KCL
Research summary
Blood clots (thrombosis) in veins and arteries can block these vessels or dislodge and block smaller vessels, causing potentially fatal conditions such as pulmonary embolism (vein clot that dislodge and block arteries in the lungs) and stroke. In some patients they can also lead to complications such as painful limb swelling, chronic leg ulceration, and poor circulation in the legs, which are debilitating and expensive to treat. Current drugs prevent (anticoagulants) or dissolve (lyse with enzymes) fresh clots, but do not remove older clots, and can cause bleeding (e.g. strokes) and are therefore not suitable for use in all patients.
Clots in veins and arteries are removed by the body through a natural process (resolution) in a manner similar to that seen in normal wound healing. We are interested in understanding the mechanisms that regulate both the formation and natural resolution of clots in order to find novel pathways that we can target to promote faster resolution; and in developing imaging techniques (e.g.MRI) that are informative of the composition of clot, allowing us to more appropriately target patients for enzyme dissolution of their clots.
We have developed models of thrombosis to investigate the mechanisms that regulate this condition and produced imaging methods that can be used to monitor these processes in the body. We now need to determine whether the findings from our models can be extrapolated to humans.
The overall aim of this work is to develop treatments and monitoring methods for thrombosis that will reduce the incidence of thrombosis and its complications.
REC name
London - Bromley Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/LO/1472
Date of REC Opinion
7 Nov 2013
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion