INQUIRING MINDS
The Form and Function of Blood Clots
By Cassie Myers
Anand Ramasubramanian, department chair of chemical and materials engineering.
The phrase “the mechanics of blood clots” can seem academically dry, as any scientist who’s tried to explain his or her work at a cocktail party well knows. But the truth is that this work, at the forefront of engineering and medicine, could have an enormous impact.
Anand Ramasubramanian, department chair of chemical and materials engineering at San José State, and John Lee, professor of mechanical engineering, have been partners on this work since 2018, working on everything from microfluidics and microgravity to understand how the components in liquid blood influence the strength of clots.
One of their projects includes a collaboration with researchers at UC Merced. Ramasubramanian and Lee and their student researchers share their experimental data (mostly microscopic examinations of blood clots and measurements of their strength and flexibility) with Dr. Kinjal Dasbiswas from physics and Dr. Arvind Gopinath from bioengineering at UC Merced.
The team, led by Dr. Dasbiswas’ postdoc, Dr. Andrei Zakharov, uses the data to model, simulate, and validate how the clots will behave in various scenarios, including if the clots’ fibers are pushed, pulled or stretched. Essentially, Ramasubramanian says, they’re trying to figure out how the properties of the fibers affect the response of the clot.
“A lot of the work we do validates our simulations on a lab bench. And that validation is potentially informative to clinicians.”
— John Lee
As Lee explains, an understanding of clot mechanics could have wide biomedical implications. Using both experimental data and the simulations’ predictions could “help you test how different types of medicine might shape the formation and interaction with clots and how people with different types of blood pathologies might react. A lot of the work we do validates our simulations on a lab bench,” he says. “And that validation is potentially informative to clinicians.”
One area of their research focuses on one such blood pathology, factor XIII deficiency, which examines how the lack of factor XIII, an important protein in the blood, can cause significant clotting problems in patients.
From left: Maya Papez, ’22 BS, ’24 MS Biomedical Engineering, and Myra Awan, ’21 BS, ’24 MS Biomedical Engineering demonstrating their work as lab supervisors in Lee and Ramasubramanian's lab. Photo by Jim Gensheimer.
M&M in the lab
This many research projects naturally requires many student researchers; luckily, Ramasubramanian and Lee have several students hard at work in their lab. Lab supervisors and self-described “lab moms” Myra Awan, ’21 BS, ’24 MS Biomedical Engineering, and Maya Papez, ’22 BS, ’24 MS Biomedical Engineering, (aka “M&M”) led a staff of eleven student researchers for the 2023-2024 year.
Awan started in the lab first, during her sophomore year of undergrad, and recently co-authored a paper in “Science Advances” along with research scientist Dr. Andrei Zakharov, Ramasubramanian, Lee and other collaborators. She was only six months into her master’s degree program when she began the research that led to the paper, a project that examined how factor XIII affected the mechanical “stiffness” of blood clots and “how manipulating the concentration of this protein in our body can manipulate how the clot is actually being formed.”
Papez, who joined the lab in late 2022, began her research with experiments based on the same project. She and Awan have continued to work on that research as well as the collaboration with UC Merced, along with all the other duties that come with helping to run a lab.
“Our research takes place in a very small aspect of your body, but it does matter and it does make an impact on your body. Anything that is topsy-turvy on your body ends up being some sort of problem that researchers like us try to understand and solve.”
— Myra Awan
Like Ramasubramanian and Lee, they have high hopes for their work. “We know that factor XIII is essential for normal physiology because some people born with factor XIII deficiency have bleeding issues and they are infused with factor XIII,” Papez says. “And if we can understand mechanically how factor XIII affects the blood clot, there might be an opportunity for new therapies for factor XIII deficiency to be developed. Somebody somewhere might take our work and say, ‘I found a secret door and I can solve this problem.’ We're kind of setting the foundation for that.”
Awan explains, “Our research takes place in a very small aspect of your body. It's also a really small concept in all of hematology, but it does matter and it does make an impact on your body. Anything that is topsy-turvy on your body ends up being some sort of problem that researchers like us try to understand and solve.”
“I really love research. It's kind of like solving a puzzle, but you don't know where all the pieces are and they're all hiding under the table. So you're going crazy searching for that one piece, which is honestly kind of fun.”
— Maya Papez
The academic impact
The lab’s work covers many different fields, reflecting both research and teaching philosophies for Lee and Ramasubramanian.
“I feel like I'd be selling my students terribly short if I only taught them one field,” Lee says. “This intersection of mechanics and biology is very stimulating, and when they get to see beyond their own discipline, it opens eyes. It helps them figure out how STEM graduates can engage and really have an impact. And those impacts are at the intersections between disciplines.”
And Lee and Ramasubramanian’s enthusiasm is clearly infectious. “I really love research,” Papez enthuses. “It's kind of like solving a puzzle, but you don't know where all the pieces are and they're all hiding under the table. So you're going crazy searching for that one piece, which is honestly kind of fun.”
Papez is pursuing a doctorate in bioengineering; Awan is interested in research and development engineering and protein research in the pharmaceutical industry.
They both encourage students to try research, no matter how intimidating it might seem. “I feel like people who read a published scientific paper only see the finishing touches of something that was perfected over a gajillion tries,” Awan says. “And they don't see the amount of failures that had to occur in order for that to be accomplished.”
Papez agrees: “Going through that process can test your resiliency. It'll show you how badly you want to find the answers to a research question. But one thing that I learned that was so important to me in research was that you should always try it out. Even if you're an undergrad and you're not really sure if you want to go into a lab, at least try it.”
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Top photo: Jim Gensheimer.
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