LEAP-HI: Towards a Paradigm of Thrombosis-Free Blood-contacting Devices

Every year, treatment of cardiovascular diseases requires thousands of heart assists, hundreds of thousands of heart valves, millions of coronary stents, tens of millions of hemodialyzers, and hundreds of millions of catheters. In all these medical devices, the main cause of morbidity and mortality is blood-clotting, which results in billions of dollars in medical costs and lost productivity.

This Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure (LEAP-HI) award supports fundamental research to help reduce blood-clotting in medical devices. The research will use promising flexible materials and clotting-resistant coatings to address blood-clotting at the molecular-scale, micro-scale and the device-scale. To accomplish this, the research will be conducted by a multidisciplinary team including experts in chemistry, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, materials science and biomedical engineering.

The results of the research have the potential to save millions of lives and billions of dollars each year, thereby directly contributing to America’s health and prosperity. Furthermore, these efforts will encourage STEM participation of underrepresented minorities and positively impact engineering education.

Thrombosis in blood-contacting devices is primarily due to poor blood-material interactions in quasi-static conditions, and flow stagnation and supraphysiological shear stresses in dynamic conditions. This research hypothesizes that a combination of tailored hydration layers and flexible materials can lead to thrombosis-free blood-contacting devices.

A multidisciplinary team will test this hypothesis through molecular dynamics simulations to understand the role of hydration layers, interfacial spectroscopy to experimentally characterize the hydration layers, fabrication of novel anti-thrombotic coatings based on the molecular dynamics simulations and interfacial spectroscopy, micro-scale evaluation of the blood-material interactions, and device-scale combination of the novel anti-thrombotic coatings and flexible materials.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.