Over 2 million people in the UK suffer from coronary heart disease and are at risk of having a heart attack. In these patients, blood clots can form in diseased arteries and block blood flow to the heart, leading to a heart attack. Despite advances in treatment, 20% of patients will go on to have another heart attack or sadly die within 12 months, highlighting the need for better treatments. Testing new treatments largely depends on animal models, which are not a good representation of human disease.  

The aim of my PhD is to create an alternative model, which does not use animals and more accurately mimics diseased human blood vessels. The model comprises of a synthetic vessel coated with human cells. Human blood is flowed through the vessel at the same rate it flows through our arteries, and we can add different proteins and markers we think are important in the disease process to look at differences in blood clot formation. We can then use this system to identify new types of treatment and evaluate how effective they are at preventing the blood clots responsible for heart attacks. The flexibility of the model will also allow it to be used to investigate different diseases, such as diabetes, sepsis, and COVID-19, which all have increased risk of blood clots. The successful development of this model will reduce the number of animals used in research and provide a new platform to develop more effective drugs to prevent heart attacks.