The huge jump in the mass production of platelets

platelet

Scientists have made a significant step towards the mass production of platelets - a part of the blood that forms clots.

NHS and Cambridge University team found the body how to grow plants in the laboratory of platelets.

This can provide a new source of platelets to stop severe bleeding, e.g., after a car accident.

However, researchers should make this process more efficient before beginning the test.

When you donate blood, it is separated into red blood cells, plasma and platelets in such patients are given only the component they need.

Platelets are necessary after trauma, surgery, and therapy of leukemia in certain blood diseases such as hemophilia.

"We are completely dependent on blood donation, to produce the blood platelets," said Dr. Cedric Ghevaert, consultant haematologist.

His team is trying to grow megakaryocytes - platelet parent cells that live in your bone marrow and the production of clotting platelets.

Their breakthrough, reported in the journal Nature Communications, was the discovery of a multitude of chemical switches needed to build megakaryocytes in the laboratory.

Dr. Ghevaert described their results as "an important step forward" and said BBC News website that "the next big step is to get a sufficient amount of platelets from megakaryocytes of each."

The cells produce the laboratory produce about 10 plates each. But each of them is working properly in the bone marrow will produce up to 2,000 people.

Hopefully, that recreate the same conditions as in the bone marrow can make cells more efficient.

When researchers have successfully, the platelets are grown in the laboratory would be more useful than those collected in the blood.

Dr. Ghevaert added: "We can change the platelets so that they can cause clotting, even better, that will have a huge advantage applies to patients who have had an accident or seepage, or even soldiers who have been wounded."

It may also allow physicians to have arsenals configured for different patients. Platelets in various forms in the same way as red blood cells come into A, B, O and AB.

Some types of platelet, particularly common in black and Asian ethnic groups are relatively rare.

Supercomputer copies the blood flow of the whole body

Image Caption Modeling includes every artery of more than 1 mm in diameter
The new supercomputer simulation of the blood moving around the whole of the human body compares very well with flow measurements in the real world, the researchers said.

The software uses a 3D-representation of each artery, which is 1 mm or wider horizontally scanned from the same person.

Its accuracy has passed the first test of the key, when physicists compared the blood flow in the aorta virtual, that with a real fluid in the 3D-printed copy.

seen in the flow pattern of physical copies it was well suited for the simulation.

This was even the case when the liquid passes through the plastic aorta - blood and virtual passing through simulated aortic - is moving in a pulsed mode to simulate the path of blood pumped by the heart.

"We get very similar results in a steady stream and pulsing, which is very exciting," lead researcher Amanda Randles, from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, he told BBC News.

She presented the results - including a comparison with 3D-printed aorta - this week at a meeting in March, the American Physical Society in Baltimore. Simulation of the entire body itself was first introduced in the computer science and practical conference in November.

It's called "Harvey" - a tribute to the physician of the 17th century, William Harvey, who first discovered that the blood is pumped into a loop around the body. At the heart of the computer code Harvey is a 3D-structure, built of whole-body CT and MRI of the patient.

"This is not a common practice," said Dr. Randles scan of the whole body. "But if we have, we can extract the arterial network.

"We get a surface mesh representing the geometry of the vessel, we decide that the liquid junction, and that the wall unit and then to simulate the flow of liquid through it."

This simulation takes place on a supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

"It has 1.6 million processors, so this is one of the top 10 supercomputers," said Dr. Randles, who worked in the supercomputers at IBM, before doing the doctor of philosophy in physics from Harvard University, where she began work on Harvey.

Image copyright Randles, Duke University
Image Caption In the end, the team wants to mimic certain blood cells - as they did earlier in the lesser models
"The first stage was simply a proof of concept: can we actually model in this scale," Most of the other simulations, she explained, have focused on small areas of the circulatory system.

"The biggest, I think, before it was possible to aortic-femoral area - so the aorta down to the knees."

Simulation of the flow inside each artery is greater than 1 mm, at a resolution of 9 microns (0.009mm), a big step forward.

One goal of the project is to check how different interference cardiovascular disease - may influence the system more widely - such as stents or other surgical changes.

"We can change the grid file representing vasculature to introduce the various treatment options," said Dr. Randles.

"Usually you look at the local hemodynamic changes, but in the presence of the simulation of the whole body, we can see how this will affect the large-scale hemodynamics."

Image copyright Lab Randles Lab / Frakes
Image caption 3D-printing a copy of the aorta allowed the team to measure physical flows
To check virtual stream Harvey blood against some actual measurements, she added, the aorta - the largest artery of them all - was the obvious choice.

"You can end up, turbulent flow, you're not going to see in other parts of the body.

"We thought that if we can make it there, we are in a good chance - we think the rest of the model."

So her team worked with the David Frakes, an engineer at the University of Arizona, the physical comparison. They used a 3D-printing to create a scanned version of a plastic aorta, so that the fluid can be pumped therethrough and flow is monitored by means of brilliant particles.

Seeing the exact reproduction of what modeling came from, said Dr. Randles, was "very useful".

"It is fairly easy to calculate the analytical solutions for flow in a pipe, or flow in a curved pipe. However, to make sure that we really are getting into a complicated geometry accurately model was much more difficult."

Image copyright Randles Lab, Duke
Image Caption simulated flow (right) was a good match for the physical measurements (left)
Then she and her colleagues are turning their attention to the other half of the system; they are already building a model grid veins of the same patient.

Ultimately, they hope to tie it all together with capillaries - tiny blood vessels in which red blood cells produce oxygen them in a single file - and even go on a liquid simulation for predicting the movements of all the individual blood cells.

If this can be done, and then simulating the progress of single cancerous cells through the blood stream will also be possible.

But this will require the next generation of supercomputers, Dr. Randles said at least a thousand times more power.

Her other hope is that their current high-level simulation will identify the most important parameters to be measured and studied - so that the estimates of the particular patient can be done without having to do a supercomputer.

"We're trying to figure out which parts of the model, we should include when," she explained.

"The aim will then be to trim the model and run it on something much more amenable."

Mini computer

Minicomputer or "MF Computers" is faster than a microcomputer but a lover than a computer and mainframe Super that the computer model is mainly with small businesses and companies, a kind of computers are not intended for a single user, but the computer using one department a large company or organizations using this computer for a particular purpose

for example, the production department can use this type of computer to monitor a specific manufacturing process. (IV) The microcomputer

The micro computer is the most common type of computer using this sort of mashing it has several categories 

* Tablet PC Notebooks 

* smart 

* calculators

that are the main categories of micro computers. but now mainly via tablets and smartphones

Micro computer the fastest growing in the world of computers, because computers are using worldwide. Micro computers are designed for general use as entertainment, educational and business purposes.

mainframe

This computer is also a large computer system, but it is smaller than the dinner the computer and that the computer that offers lower than a super computer that the computer used for large companies this kind of computer can run multiple applications do not need a special application using a computer enterprise resource planning and the processing of financial transactions. and that the computer system is safe than minicomputers that the computer system manly based on UNIX system, computer competitive and cost-effective e-commerce platform for comparing supercomputer

Supercomputer

It is the largest computer and very fast computer model of the world, a kind of computers with the help of careful large companies such as Google, Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, and with the help of research in nuclear energy, space research, weather forecasting and oil exploration with the use of this such as computers, because computers that type can handle a large number of calculations, and not only what type of computers are very specific applications that are special that computers are computers and are very expensive to maintain and the cost are wary of high