Leveraging platelet contraction cytometry for immune thrombocytopenia

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Defined by low platelet count in the absence of any other cause, immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) affects over 4,000 US children and 8,000 adults each year. While the majority of ITP cases resolve themselves, patients with ITP have an enhanced risk of bleeding, with 10% experiencing major bleeding, and

0.5% of experiencing life-threatening intracranial hemorrhage. There is no biomarker for ITP or much less, bleeding risk, and all treatments involve significant side effects. This leaves clinicians with a significant dilemma in deciding whether or not to treat. Patients who are ultimately at high risk may not receive treatment

until serious bleeding occurs, and low risk patients may be exposed to unnecessary treatment side effects. The research objective of this proposal is to investigate a novel hypothesis, namely, that the contractile force of individual platelets correlates with bleeding phenotype in ITP, independent of traditionally used biological

markers or assays of hematological function. Using a newly developed high-throughput platelet contraction cytometer (PCC) to measure single platelet contractile forces in parallel, our latest results of a study of pediatric patients with primary ITP suggests that platelet forces 1) vary significantly from healthy controls,

2) strongly correlate with bleeding (n=49 patients) and 3) change over time in the same patient (n=7). Using an average force cutoff value of 26nN, we found that low forces identified bleeding in ITP with 100% sensitivity and 89.4% specificity, with a specificity improvement to 94% when only considering patients with a platelet

count