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Promising drug dissolves blood clots

A blockage to a blood vessel poses a major health risk, especially if the clot is not dealt with within a few hours. The best course of action that medical staff can take is to attempt to remove or dissolve the blood clot, in order to avoid tissue destruction. This is a tricky process, with medications currently marketed being based on an enzymatic reaction. With a new medical innovation, researchers at the ITMO University and Mariinsky Hospital in Saint Petersburg have devised a magnetically controlled drug capable of being condensed onto a blood clot via a magnetic field.

The medication is administered by injection and in trials it has been shown to dissolve clots 4000 times more effectively than drugs currently available. Moreover, enzymatic drugs are not available in many regions of the world due to their prohibitive costs.

Not only is the new medication faster, it requires a low dose to be administered and is said to carry fewer side-effects. One reason why enzymatic drugs carry higher side-effects is because the action of the drug is indiscriminate and the drug passes through the entire blood circulatory system. The new drug is more focused, forming part of the targeted drug delivery range.

The basis of the new drug is a composite material (a sol-gel magnetite matrix) that can carry thrombolytic enzymes (urokinase) more efficiently and directly to the blood clot. The composite material is nano-size and it is controlled through the use of a magnetic field. This different, but effective, tract has attracted interest from the scientific community on Twitter.

The magnetic field not only helps to direct the path of the nanoparticles, it also affords a level of protection from the inhibitory substances naturally present in the blood. Here, one of the researchers, Dr. Andrey Drozdov told Pharmaceutical Processing: “We [have] experimentally demonstrated that enzymes protected using our approach do not lose therapeutic properties over extended periods of time and even after repeated use. The rate, at which the new drug can dissolve the clot outperforms unprotected enzymes by about 4000 times.”

The new drug can also be produced at relatively lower costs than the medications that are currently available.

Details of the new medication have been published in the journal Scientific Reports. The research paper is titled “Leach-proof magnetic thrombolytic nanoparticles and coatings of enhanced activity.”

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Written By

Dr. Tim Sandle is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for science news. Tim specializes in science, technology, environmental, business, and health journalism. He is additionally a practising microbiologist; and an author. He is also interested in history, politics and current affairs.

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