Advance our understanding and prediction of deadly blood clot for high-risk patients

Mr Yunduo Zhao, University of Sydney

2022 PhD Scholarship

Years funded: 2023-2025

Coronary artery disease (CAD) remains the leading cause of mortality in Australia, responding to an average of 2 people dying every hour. Despite the traditional diagnosis approaches to CAD, there’s no available approach to predict vaso-occlusive blood clots in coronary arteries and subsequent sudden death. In addition, it has long been known that various blood properties from patient to patient, such as haematocrit and viscosity, are related to multiple blood clotting phenotypes. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop personalised approaches to diagnose and predict blood clot related heart attacks for CAD patients at an earlier stage. To this end, as the first-of-its-kind bioengineering endeavour in Australia, this project will develop a 3D patient-specific microfluidic blood test platform to mimic individual blood vessel geometry at USYD’s newly launched School of Biomedical Engineering. These miniaturised chips will serve as a one-day diagnostic approach for heart attacks prediction and precision medicine using one droplet of blood.