Team:Mines

Blood
Based
Microwheels

Our Projects

Blood Type Conversion

Blood banks across the country are at a near-constant shortage of high quality donations to give to patients due to many patients being unable to receive commonly-donated blood types. Our research guided us to a pair of enzymes produced in the human gut that can cleave off the antigens on blood cells to leave an O-type product that is more easily accepted. If these enzymes can be expressed and produced at scale, we can improve the availability of blood transfusions. Our research focuses on designing novel methods for the steady state conversion of blood type.

Blood Clot Lysis

Tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) is a protein that is used in conjunction with plasminogen to break up fibrin, the primary structural component of blood clots. Currently it is manufactured using recombinant DNA technologies and is injected into the body in a soluble form. Our research focuses on improving the modern treatment of blood clots by binding TPA to dynabeads which can be controlled magnetically to more accurately control the movement of TPA in the body and its ability to access the fibrin on the surface of blood clots.

Our Team