Latest news with #ReneeZhao
CBS News
02-07-2025
- Health
- CBS News
Stanford researchers unveil breakthrough for treating blood clots in stroke, heart attack patients
Stanford researchers have discovered a breakthrough technology to eliminate blood clots to treat strokes, heart attacks, and other clot-related diseases. Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. It happens when a clot blocks blood flow in the brain. Time is crucial when treating stroke patients. During a stroke, millions of neurons die every second, causing permanent, irreversible damage to the brain. The researchers came up with a new, life-saving way to shrink and remove these damaging clots. The technology is called a milli-spinner thrombectomy. Renee Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, is leading breakthrough technology in treating stroke patients. "This new technology is extremely exciting because we physically developed the first mechanism to shrink the size of the clot, so we can shrink the clot from its original size to just 5% of its original volume," said Renee Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University. Currently, the only way to treat stroke patients is to either inject a tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), a chemical to dissolve the clot, which only works in the first few hours. The clot can then be removed through aspiration thrombectomy, sucking it out like a vacuum machine or through mechanical thrombectomy stent removal to pull out the clot. The problem with both cases is that the clot can easily break apart, fragmenting into smaller pieces that could move into extremely difficult places to reach. Zhao said their the milli-spinner thrombectomy invention actually changes the microstructure of the clot. "This is very similar to the microstructure of a clot," said Zhao. "It's a bunch of fiber networks, and it's very loosely distributed. And now what the spinner is doing is that when it rotates, it generates a sheer force. It's like my palm applying a sheer force just like that, so it densifies the fiber network. Eventually, what we see is a highly-densified fiber core." The incredible thing is that Zhao and her researchers were completely surprised by their invention, never expecting to see the clot transform before their eyes. "Interestingly, we found a very exciting phenomenon," said Zhao. "We physically saw the clot start to turn white because a clot is red and it has all the red blood cells in the fiber network, but it turned white! That's bizarre! Basically, we've never seen anything like that." "The first step is I'm going to load our milli-spinner into the catheter," said Stanford 4th-year Ph. D. student Yilong Chang. "Here's what our milli-spinner looks like. It's 1.2 millimeter in diameter. It's very small. It has a unique geometry with a hole in the front and four slits on the side." Researchers gave us a demo of the milli-spinner in action, showing us exactly how it works and how quickly it can remove a clot. "Now I still feel this mechanism is not something that someone can easily come up with a clot treatment strategy by extracting the fiber," said Zhao. "Nobody would think of that, so the key point of the way we do research is always feel free and open to the unexpected findings, and they will always give us something that is beyond imagination!" The spirit of Zhao's lab is one of curiosity, creativity and exploration. She said true innovation comes when you embrace the unexpected. It's this passion that drives the advancements of her lab's impressive scientific discoveries. Zhao's new technology, published last month in the scientific journal Nature, is more than twice as effective as current techniques. Zhao and her team of researchers are hoping to perform their first trial on a human next year.
Fox News
16-06-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Stanford researchers develop ‘game-changing' stroke treatment that doubles effectiveness
Researchers at Stanford University say they have developed a more effective way to treat strokes. The new technology, called the milli-spinner thrombectomy, has been shown to have more successful outcomes for patients who have experienced strokes, as well as heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and other clot-related diseases, according to a press release from the university. Blood clots are clumped together by thread-like proteins called fibrin. The milli-spinner — which is a long, hollow, rotating tube with a series of "fins and slits" — enters the body through a catheter and applies force and suction to the clot. As a result, the blood clot is reduced in size — down to as little as 5% of its original volume — without breaking any of the fibrin threads. That's important because breaking up the clot can result in pieces of it escaping and getting stuck in hard-to-reach places, the researchers noted. With the milli-spinner, red blood cells are "freed" and the much smaller fibrin clot is removed from the body. "With existing technology, there's no way to reduce the size of the clot. They rely on deforming and rupturing the clot to remove it," said senior author Renee Zhao, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, in the release. "What's unique about the milli-spinner is that it applies compression and shear forces to shrink the entire clot, dramatically reducing the volume without causing rupture." Time is of the essence when treating an ischemic stroke, which is when the clot is cutting off oxygen to the brain. Studies have shown that for every minute during a stroke, 1.9 million brain neurons and 14 billion synapses are destroyed. With current technologies, clots are only removed about half the time on the first try, the release stated, and they fail completely about 15% of the time. "For most cases, we're more than doubling the efficacy of current technology, and for the toughest clots – which we're only removing about 11% of the time with current devices – we're getting the artery open on the first try 90% of the time," said co-author Jeremy Heit, chief of neuroimaging and neurointervention at Stanford, in the release. "This is a sea-change technology that will drastically improve our ability to help people." The researchers' findings, which incorporated both animal studies and machine-based flow models, were published June 4 in the journal Nature. The multi-spinner could potentially be used for other applications, such as capturing and removing kidney stone fragments, the release noted. The team is now working to get the new technology approved for clinical use, with clinical trials expected to begin soon. "What makes this technology truly exciting is its unique mechanism to actively reshape and compact clots, rather than just extracting them," Zhao said. "We're working to bring this into clinical settings, where it could significantly boost the success rate of thrombectomy procedures and save patients' lives." For more Health articles, visit Fox News Digital reached out to the researchers and cardiologists for comment.
