Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Failure to control bleeding after injury, such as during trauma, childbirth and surgery, accounts for more than half of all operating room deaths. Platelets are blood cells that recognize and stick to sites of active bleeding, where they release specific substances and proteins to initiate blood clotting. The gold standard therapy for treating severe bleeds is transfusing the patient with more platelets. However, in some cases of severe bleeding, transfused platelets can have impaired clotting ability making the treatment ineffective for controlling blood loss. A strategy to improve platelet function to treat severe bleeds is to load platelets with more of their required clot-initiating proteins, thereby enhancing their natural ability to halt bleeding. This project aims to use cutting-edge technology to genetically engineer donor platelets used in the clinic, such that they can stop bleeding faster and create stronger clots than standard platelets. Using lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), a technology developed by researchers at the University of British Columbia that enabled the revolutionary COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, the genetic blueprint for clot-initiating factors will be loaded into platelets. Subsequent production of the factors from the blueprint will prime the platelets for potent response to better control bleeding. Enhancing the natural properties of platelets will improve options for bleeding control after trauma, with the potential to reduce the number of hemorrhage-related deaths in Canada. Platelets have also been implicated in cancer and inflammatory diseases and this project will provide proof-of-concept that modified platelets can be used as a platform technology to deliver therapeutics in a multitude of disease contexts.