Student research project
Supervisor(s): Professor Karlheinz Peter, Dr Mitchell Moon and Dr James McFadyen
Project summary
Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and major morbidity worldwide. Despite this, the current thrombolytic (clot busting) therapies remain largely ineffective and many patients are resistant to therapy. There is a need for improved thrombolytic drugs and strategies for overcoming thrombolysis resistance. One strategy for achieving this, is using targeted drug delivery to deliver high local concentrations of thrombolytic drugs to the thrombus, to improve the efficacy of drug treatment. To achieve this, we are proposing using platelet derived nanoparticles loaded with thrombolytic drugs to achieve targeted thrombolysis.
The main aims of this project are to:
- Generate and characterise platelet derived nanoparticles.
- Drug loading of platelet derived nanoparticles.
- Assess the potential of drug loaded nanoparticles as a targeted thrombolytic therapy.
Related methods, skills or technologies
This project is suitable for a Masters, Honours or PhD student and would involve techniques like:
- isolating platelets from human blood
- flow cytometry
- confocal microscopy
- generating ex vivo human thrombi.
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