UPDATE (Aug. 2, 2024): A previous version of this story misstated Paul Kinahan’s name.

Fifteen faculty members at the 天美影视传媒 have been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences. They are among 36 scientists and educators from across the state . Selection recognizes the new members鈥� 鈥渙utstanding record of scientific and technical achievement, and their willingness to work on behalf of the academy to bring the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.鈥�

Twelve UW faculty members were selected by current WSAS members. They are:

• , associate professor of epidemiology, of health systems and population health, and of child, family and population health nursing, who 鈥減ossesses the rare combination of scientific rigor and courageous commitment to local community health. Identifying original ways to examine questions, and seeking out appropriate scientific methods to study those questions, allow her to translate research to collaborative community interventions with a direct impact on the health of communities.鈥�
• , the Shauna C. Larson endowed chair in learning sciences, for 鈥渉is work in the cultural basis of scientific research and learning, bringing rigor and light to multiculturalism in science and STEM education through STEM Teaching Tools and other programs.鈥�
• , professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, 鈥渇or her sustained commitment to community-engaged, science-driven practice and policy change related to the prevention of suicide and the promotion of mental health, with a focus on providing effective, sustainable and culturally appropriate care to people with serious mental illness.鈥�
• , the David and Nancy Auth endowed professor in bioengineering, who has 鈥渃harted new paths for 30-plus years. Her quest to deeply understand protein folding/unfolding and the link to amyloid diseases has propelled her to pioneer unique computational and experimental methods leading to the discovery and characterization of a new protein structure linked to toxicity early in amyloidogenesis.鈥�
• , professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, of global health, and of emergency medicine, who is 鈥渁 global and national leader at the intersection of climate change and health whose work has advanced our understanding of climate change health effects and has informed the design of preparedness and disaster response planning in Washington state, nationally and globally.鈥�
• , professor of bioengineering and of radiology, who is 鈥渞ecognized for his contributions to the science and engineering of medical imaging systems and for leadership in national programs and professional and scientific societies advancing the capabilities of medical imaging.鈥�
• , the Donald W. and Ruth Mary Close professor of electrical and computer engineering and faculty member in the UW Clean Energy Institute, who is 鈥渞ecognized for his distinguished research contributions to the design and operation of economical, reliable and environmentally sustainable power systems, and the development of influential educational materials used to train the next generation of power engineers.鈥�
• , senior vice president and director of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, the Joel D. Meyers endowed chair of clinical research and of vaccine and infectious disease at Fred Hutch, and UW professor of medicine, who is 鈥渋s recognized for her seminal contributions to developing validated laboratory methods for interrogating cellular and humoral immune responses to HIV, TB and COVID-19 vaccines, which has led to the analysis of more than 100 vaccine and monoclonal antibody trials for nearly three decades, including evidence of T-cell immune responses as a correlate of vaccine protection.鈥�
• , professor of political science and the Walker family professor for the arts and sciences, who is a specialist 鈥渋n environmental politics, international political economy, and the politics of nonprofit organizations. He is widely recognized as a leader in the field of environmental politics, best known for his path-breaking research on the role firms and nongovernmental organizations can play in promoting more stringent regulatory standards.鈥�
• , the Ballmer endowed dean of social work, for investigations of 鈥渉ow inequality, in its many forms, affects health, illness and quality of life. He has developed unique conceptual frameworks to investigate how race, ethnicity and immigration are associated with health and social outcomes.鈥�
• , professor of chemistry, who is elected 鈥渇or distinguished scientific and community contributions to advancing the field of electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, which have transformed how researchers worldwide analyze data.鈥�
• , professor of bioengineering and of ophthalmology, whose 鈥減ioneering work in biomedical optics, including the invention of optical microangiography and development of novel imaging technologies, has transformed clinical practice, significantly improving patient outcomes. Through his numerous publications, patents and clinical translations, his research has helped shape the field of biomedical optics.鈥�

Three new UW members of the academy were selected by virtue of their previous election to one of the National Academies. They are:

• , professor of atmospheric and climate science, who had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences 鈥渇or contributions to research and expertise in atmospheric radiation and cloud processes, remote sensing, cloud/aerosol/radiation/climate interactions, stratospheric circulation and stratosphere-troposphere exchanges and coupling, and climate change.鈥�
• , the Bartley Dobb professor for the study and prevention of violence in the Department of Epidemiology and a UW professor of pediatrics, who had been elected to the National Academy of Medicine 鈥渇or being a national public health leader whose innovative and multidisciplinary research to integrate data across the health care system and criminal legal system has deepened our understanding of the risk and consequences of firearm-related harm and informed policies and programs to reduce its burden, especially among underserved communities and populations.鈥�
• , division chief of general pediatrics at Seattle Children鈥檚 Hospital and a UW professor of pediatrics, who had been elected to the National Academy of Medicine 鈥渇or her leadership in advancing child health equity through scholarship in community-partnered design of innovative care models in pediatric primary care. Her work has transformed our understanding of how to deliver child preventive health care during the critical early childhood period to achieve equitable health outcomes and reduce disparities.鈥�

In addition, Dr. , president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and of the Cancer Consortium 鈥� a partnership between the UW, Seattle Children鈥檚 Hospital and Fred Hutch 鈥� was elected to the academy for being 鈥減art of a research effort that found mutations in the cell-surface protein epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), which plays an important role in helping lung cancer cells survive. Today, drugs that target EGFR can dramatically change outcomes for lung cancer patients by slowing the progression of the cancer.鈥�

the Boeing-Egtvedt endowed professor and chair in aeronautics and astronautics, will join the board effective Sept. 30. Morgansen was elected to WSAS in 2021 鈥渇or significant advances in nonlinear methods for integrated sensing and control in engineered, bioinspired and biological flight systems,鈥� and 鈥渇or leadership in cross-disciplinary aerospace workforce development.鈥� She is currently director of the Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium, co-director of the UW Space Policy and Research Center and chair of the AIAA Aerospace Department Chairs Association. She is also a member of the WSAS education committee.

鈥淚 am excited to serve on the WSAS board and work with WSAS members to leverage and grow WSAS鈥檚 impact by identifying new opportunities for WSAS to collaborate and partner with the state in addressing the state鈥檚 needs,鈥� said Morgansen.

The new members to the Washington State Academy of Sciences will be formally inducted in September.

Smart accessories are increasingly common. Rings and watches track vitals, while Ray-Bans now . Wearable tech has even broached . Yet certain accessories have yet to get the smart touch.

天美影视传媒 researchers introduced the Thermal Earring, a wireless wearable that continuously monitors a user鈥檚 earlobe temperature. In a study of six users, the earring outperformed a smartwatch at sensing skin temperature during periods of rest. It also showed promise for monitoring signs of stress, eating, exercise and ovulation.

The smart earring prototype is about the size and weight of a small paperclip and has a 28-day battery life. A magnetic clip attaches one temperature sensor to a wearer鈥檚 ear, while another sensor dangles about an inch below it for estimating room temperature. The earring can be personalized with fashion designs made of resin (in the shape of a flower, for example) or with a gemstone, without negatively affecting its accuracy.

Researchers Jan. 12 in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies. The device is not currently commercially available.

鈥淚 wear a smartwatch to track my personal health, but I鈥檝e found that a lot of people think smartwatches are unfashionable or bulky and uncomfortable,鈥� said co-lead author , a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. 鈥淚 also like to wear earrings, so we started thinking about what unique things we can get from the earlobe. We found that sensing the skin temperature on the lobe, instead of a hand or wrist, was much more accurate. It also gave us the option to have part of the sensor dangle to separate ambient room temperature from skin temperature.鈥�

Creating a wearable small enough to pass as an earring, yet robust enough that users would have to charge it only every few days, presented an engineering challenge.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a tricky balance,鈥� said co-lead author , who was a UW masters student in the electrical and computer engineering department when doing the research and is now at the University of California San Diego. 鈥淭ypically, if you want power to last longer, you should have a bigger battery. But then you sacrifice size. Making it wireless also demands more energy.鈥�

The team made the earring鈥檚 power consumption as efficient as possible, while also making space for a Bluetooth chip, a battery, two temperature sensors and an antenna. Instead of pairing it with a device, which uses more power, the earring uses Bluetooth advertising mode 鈥� the transmissions a device broadcasts to show it can be paired. After reading and sending the temperature, it goes into deep sleep to save power.

Because continuous earlobe temperature has not been studied widely, the team also explored potential applications to guide future research. In five patients with fevers, the average earlobe temperature rose 10.62 degrees Fahrenheit (5.92 degrees Celsius) compared with the temperatures of 20 healthy patients, suggesting the earring鈥檚 potential for continuous fever monitoring.

鈥淚n medicine we often monitor fevers to assess response to therapy 鈥� to see, for instance, if an antibiotic is working on an infection,鈥� said co-author , a clinical instructor at the Department of Emergency Medicine in the UW School of Medicine. 鈥淟onger term monitoring is a way to increase sensitivity of capturing fevers, since they can rise and fall throughout the day.鈥�

While core body temperature generally stays relatively constant outside of fever, earlobe temperature varies more, presenting several novel uses for the Thermal Earring. In small proof-of-concept tests, the earring detected temperature variations correlated with eating, exercising and experiencing stress. When tested on six users at rest, the earring鈥檚 reading varied by 0.58 F (0.32 C) on average, placing it within the range of 0.28 C to 0.56 C necessary for ovulation and period tracking; a smartwatch varied by 0.72 C.

鈥淐urrent wearables like Apple Watch and Fitbit have temperature sensors, but they provide only an average temperature for the day, and their temperature readings from wrists and hands are too noisy to track ovulation,鈥� Xue said. 鈥淪o we wanted to explore unique applications for the earring, especially applications that might be attractive to women and anyone who cares about fashion.鈥�

While researchers found several promising potential applications for the Thermal Earring, their findings were preliminary, since the focus was on the range of potential uses. They need more data to train their models for each use case and more thorough testing before the device might be used by the public. For future iterations of the device, Xue is working to integrate heart rate and activity monitoring. She鈥檚 also interested in potentially powering the device from solar or kinetic energy from the earring swaying.

鈥淓ventually, I want to develop a jewelry set for health monitoring,鈥� Xue said. 鈥淭he earrings would sense activity and health metrics such as temperature and heart rate, while a necklace might serve as an electrocardiogram monitor for more effective heart health data.鈥�

, a doctoral student in the Allen School, was a co-author on the paper. , a professor in the Allen School, and , a professor in the Allen School and the electrical and computer engineering department, were co-senior authors. This research was funded by the Washington Research Foundation and the .

For more information, contact Xue at qxue2@cs.washington.edu and Liu at yul276@ucsd.edu.

For questions specifically for Dr. Mastafa Springston, please contact Susan Gregg at sghanson@uw.edu.

If you鈥檝e ever thought you may be running a temperature yet couldn鈥檛 find a thermometer, you aren鈥檛 alone. A fever is the and an early sign of many other viral infections. For quick diagnoses and to prevent viral spread, a temperature check can be crucial. Yet accurate at-home thermometers aren鈥檛 commonplace, despite .

There are a few potential reasons for that. The devices can range from $15 to $300, and many people need them only a few times a year. In times of sudden demand 鈥� such as the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic 鈥� thermometers can sell out. Many people, particularly those in under-resourced areas, can end up without a vital medical device when they need it most.

To address this issue, a team led by researchers at the 天美影视传媒 has created an app called FeverPhone, which transforms smartphones into thermometers without adding new hardware. Instead, it uses the phone’s touchscreen and repurposes the existing battery temperature sensors to gather data that a machine learning model uses to estimate people鈥檚 core body temperatures. When the researchers tested FeverPhone on 37 patients in an emergency department, the app estimated core body temperatures with accuracy comparable to some consumer thermometers. The team March 28 in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies.

鈥淚n undergrad, I was doing research in a lab where we wanted to show that you could use the temperature sensor in a smartphone to measure air temperature,鈥� said lead author , a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.聽鈥淲hen I came to the UW, my adviser and I wondered how we could apply a similar technique for health. We decided to measure fever in an accessible way. The primary concern with temperature isn鈥檛 that it鈥檚 a difficult signal to measure; it鈥檚 just that people don鈥檛 have thermometers.鈥�

The app is the first to use existing phone sensors to estimate whether people have fevers. It needs more training data to be widely used, Breda said, but for doctors, the potential of such technology is exciting.

鈥淧eople come to the ER all the time saying, ‘I think I was running a fever.’ And that鈥檚 very different than saying ‘I was running a fever,’鈥� said , a co-author on the study and a UW clinical instructor at the Department of Emergency Medicine in the UW School of Medicine.聽鈥淚n a wave of influenza, for instance, people running to the ER can take five days, or even a week sometimes. So if people were to share fever results with public health agencies through the app, similar to how we signed up for COVID exposure warnings, this earlier sign could help us intervene much sooner.鈥�

Clinical-grade thermometers use tiny sensors known as thermistors to estimate body temperature. Off-the-shelf smartphones also happen to contain thermistors; they鈥檙e mostly used to monitor the temperature of the battery. But the UW researchers realized they could use these sensors to track heat transfer between a person and a phone. The phone touchscreen could sense skin-to-phone contact, and the thermistors could gauge the air temperature and the rise in heat when the phone touched a body.

To test this idea, the team started by gathering data in a lab. To simulate a warm forehead, the researchers heated a plastic bag of water with a sous-vide machine and pressed phone screens against the bag. To account for variations in circumstances, such as different people using different phones, the researchers tested three phone models. They also added accessories such as a screen protector and a case and changed the pressure on the phone.

The researchers used the data from different test cases to train a machine learning model that used the complex interactions to estimate body temperature. Since the sensors are supposed to gauge the phone鈥檚 battery heat, the app tracks how quickly the phone heats up and then uses the touchscreen data to account for how much of that comes from a person touching it. As they added more test cases, the researchers were able to calibrate the model to account for the variations in things such as phone accessories.

Then the team was ready to test the app on people. The researchers took FeverPhone to the UW School of Medicine鈥檚 Emergency Department for a clinical trial where they compared its temperature estimates against an oral thermometer reading. They recruited 37 participants, 16 of whom had at least a mild fever.

To use FeverPhone, the participants held the phones like point-and-shoot cameras 鈥� with forefingers and thumbs touching the corner edges to reduce heat from the hands being sensed (some had the researcher hold the phone for them). Then participants pressed the touchscreen against their foreheads for about 90 seconds, which the researchers found to be the ideal time to sense body heat transferring to the phone.

Overall, FeverPhone estimated patient core body temperatures with an average error of about 0.41 degrees Fahrenheit (0.23 degrees Celsius), which is in the clinically acceptable range of 0.5 C.

The researchers have highlighted a few areas for further investigation. The study didn鈥檛 include participants with severe fevers above 101.5 F (38.6 C), because these temperatures are easy to diagnose and because sweaty skin tends to confound other skin-contact thermometers, according to the team. Also, FeverPhone was tested on only three phone models. Training it to run on other smartphones, as well as devices such as smartwatches, would increase its potential for public health applications, the team said.

鈥淲e started with smartphones since they鈥檙e ubiquitous and easy to get data from,鈥� Breda said. 鈥淚 am already working on seeing if we can get a similar signal with a smartwatch. What鈥檚 nice, because watches are much smaller, is their temperature will change more quickly. So you could imagine having a user put a Fitbit to their forehead and measure in 10 seconds whether they have a fever or not.鈥�

, a UW professor in the Allen School and the electrical and computer engineering department, was a senior author on the paper, and , an assistant professor in the University of Toronto鈥檚 computer science department, was a co-author. This research was supported by the 天美影视传媒 Gift Fund.

For more information, contact Breda at joebreda@cs.washington.edu. He’ll be traveling for research starting June 23; his availability for interviews will be limited after that.

For questions specifically for Dr. Mastafa Springston, please contact Susan Gregg at sghanson@uw.edu.

Americans visit hospital emergency departments nearly . Although the focus of these visits is to address acute illness and injury, doctors are increasingly finding that social needs 鈥� such as food and housing insecurity 鈥� place many patients at higher risk of getting sick and requiring emergency care.

In order to better serve patients and possibly prevent future emergency department visits, doctors need a way to assess incoming patients to establish a wider context behind their visit.

A team led by the 天美影视传媒 developed a chatbot that could ask emergency department visitors about social needs, including housing, food, access to medical care and physical safety. The team tested it on 41 patients in Seattle and Los Angeles emergency departments. Results show that two groups of patients preferred the chatbot: patients who had less than a middle school level of health literacy and patients who appreciated establishing emotional connections.

The team in July at the Conference for Conversational User Interfaces 2021.

“A few years ago there was a huge buzz around chatbots, and then people started realizing that maybe they aren’t meant for everything,” said co-senior author , a UW associate professor in the human centered design and engineering department. “We have been trying to figure out opportunities where having a chatbot would actually be meaningful and make sense.”

One good opportunity involved collaborating with emergency department doctors.

“We want to understand the upstream issues that bring people into the emergency department. What are the social needs of the patients that we serve and how can we develop interventions that address these needs?” said co-author Dr. , associate professor of emergency medicine in the UW School of Medicine. “For many people, including those with low literacy levels, a chatbot makes so much sense for collecting this information.”

The team designed a chatbot named HarborBot, after the hospitals where it was tested. HarborBot takes patients through a social needs survey that was developed by the Los Angeles County Health Agency. This survey asks patients 36 questions related to demographics, finances, employment, education, housing, food and utilities. It also asks questions related to physical safety, legal needs and access to care.

HarborBot is displayed on a tablet as a typical chat window with the patient’s and bot’s conversation showing up in different colored bubbles. HarborBot’s chat bubble shows animated ellipses when the bot is “typing.”

Based on , the researchers improved the chatbot鈥檚 efficiency and social skills.

For efficiency, the researchers:

• modified the amount of time the bot looked like it was typing to match the length of text the bot displayed. This means that the bot would “type” for a shorter amount of time for a shorter response
• added a question at the beginning of the interaction that would allow patients to stop HarborBot from reading all of its questions and responses aloud
• placed the patients’ answer options in the same part of the screen so that patients, who were often tired or in pain, could respond without having to move their hands

To increase the empathy of the interaction, the team changed the bot’s reactions to better match the content of the questions and patient responses.

“Some of the questions are quite sensitive 鈥� there are questions about violence and sexual abuse 鈥� and the bot’s original responses said ‘Sure,’ ‘Great’ or ‘Thanks for sharing with us,'” said lead author , who completed this project as a doctoral student at the UW and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech. “We tried tailoring its responses in a way that made them more appropriate for the content and specific to the patients’ responses, such as ‘That must be stressful, thank you for letting me know.'”

After HarborBot received its upgrades, the researchers tested it at two emergency departments: one at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and the other at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

For both locations, the researchers worked at night (between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. in Seattle and between 4 p.m. and 4 a.m. in Los Angeles). The teams collaborated with triage nurses to select potential participants. Then the researchers took participants to a visitor room where they could still hear announcements. After the patients signed a consent form, they completed:

• two surveys to gauge health literacy. One survey asks patients to pronounce health-related terms and the other asks patients to
• the social needs survey as both a web form through SurveyGizmo and an interaction with HarborBot. These were given in a randomized order
• evaluations for both the web form and HarborBot
• a survey to gauge a patient’s desire for emotional interactions

At the end, the researchers interviewed the participants about the experience.

The team was not surprised to find that many people with low health literacy preferred the HarborBot version of the survey 鈥� 17 out of 20 low-literacy participants chose HarborBot, compared to 8 out of 21 high-literacy participants. People who valued emotional connection also liked the chatbot but these two groups didn’t necessarily overlap.

“We thought maybe people with low health literacy would also be more in need of emotional interaction,” Kocielnik said. “But it turns out, the two groups are not strongly correlated.”

For the 23 participants who scored high on the emotional interactions questionnaire, 18 chose HarborBot. Meanwhile only 7 of the 18 participants who scored lower on that questionnaire preferred HarborBot.

“It’s important to understand that chatbots can benefit people in different ways,” said co-author , a UW doctoral student in human centered design and engineering.

In the future, the team plans to design a survey system that could tailor the experience to each user. For example, it could start out as the chatbot, but then based on how a user is answering the questions, it could shift into more of a survey format.

“Our vision would be some sort of kiosk people could use while they are waiting. Or even a QR code that people can scan with their own devices and then answer these questions,” Hsieh said. “Ultimately we want to connect people entering emergency departments as smoothly as possible with the resources that they need.”

in the UW biomedical and health informatics department is the other co-senior author on this paper. Additional co-authors are Dr. and Layla Anderson, both in the UW emergency medicine department; Amelia Wang and , both of whom completed this research as a UW undergraduate students majoring in human centered design and engineering; Darwin Jones, who completed this research as a UW undergraduate student majoring in biomedical and health informatics; , Shota Akenaga and Dr. Kabir Yadav at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center; and Dr. at Contra Costa Health Plan. This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

For more information, contact Kocielnik at rafalko@caltech.edu, Langevin at rlangevi@uw.edu and Hsieh at garyhs@uw.edu. To speak to Herbert Duber, please contact Susan Gregg at sghanson@uw.edu.

Grant number: UL1 TR002319

Emergency room doctors often have only a few minutes to determine which patients are in need of a blood transfusion.

But currently doctors have no direct method to assess the health of one of the most critical component of the blood: platelets. These tiny blood cells play a huge role in helping blood clot after an injury.

Now researchers at the 天美影视传媒 have created a novel system that can measure platelet function within two minutes and can help doctors determine which trauma patients might need a blood transfusion upon being admitted to a hospital. The team March 13 in Nature Communications.

“Our system requires a tiny amount of blood to look at how healthy platelets are in real time,” said co-corresponding author , an associate professor in the UW Department of Mechanical Engineering. “We found that platelet function is a far better measure of platelet health and whether a trauma patient will need a blood transfusion than current methods.”

Platelets are the first responders to any sort of damage to blood vessels.

“They act as a sort of instant patch,” Sniadecki said. “They become activated and stick to the damage, and then they rapidly change their shape to stretch and reach out for more of the wound surface or other platelets. Then they begin to come back together to compact and add strength to a clot.”

In patients who’ve experienced trauma, however, platelets can lose the ability to do their jobs, including becoming less able to apply the forces needed to stop bleeding.

“When trauma patients come into the ER, we use a variety of methods to estimate their risk of bleeding, but none of these tests tells us specifically about platelet strength,” said co-corresponding author , an associate professor of emergency medicine at the UW School of Medicine.

White, Sniadecki and their team designed a microfluidic device that measures platelet forces in real time. First, the researchers inject a blood sample into the device. As the blood flows through it, the cells hit an obstacle course: tiny blocks and posts jutting up from the base of the device. This activates the platelets. They feel a massive force when they flow over the blocks, and then the surface of both the blocks and the posts are coated with a platelet-activating molecule.

“The block and post structures act like a mini wound surface,” said lead author , who conducted this research as a mechanical engineering doctoral student at the UW. “The platelets attach between the block and post, and they start to snowball. They aggregate to form a miniature plug that then begins to contract and pull the post toward the block. Based on how far the post moves, we can determine how functional the platelets are.”

Sniadecki’s lab has used to measure cell forces, but this is the first time that blocks have been added to the mix. Without the blocks, the platelets didn’t stick to the posts.

“As the platelets whip around the block, they are forced to change direction rapidly, and that activates the platelets,” Ting said.

To test their device, the researchers recruited participants from Harborview Medical Center. After providing informed consent, 93 trauma patients and 10 healthy participants had their blood sampled when they arrived at the center.

The results showed a significant difference between the healthy participants’ blood and that of the trauma patients. Trauma patients’ platelets had decreased forces compared to healthy participants’ platelets. Of the trauma patients, 17 required a blood transfusion during their first 24 hours in the hospital. These patients also had the lowest platelet forces compared to the trauma patients who didn’t receive a transfusion.

Sometimes trauma patients have fewer platelets, so one current test in the ER is to count the number of platelets. But when the researchers looked at platelet count for this study, all blood samples 鈥� including those from healthy participants 鈥� had a comparable number of platelets.

“It’s a big deal not just knowing how many platelets are in the blood but knowing how well they’re actually functioning,” White said. “It’s not always obvious which patients will need a blood transfusion, and a device like this can really help us make decisions quickly.”

Currently the team is working to make the device more user-friendly.

“It’s still a prototype where you have to have some training in how to operate it to get a reading,” said Ting, who is now director of research and development at , the company that spun out from this research. “Our goal is to make it user-friendly and comparable to a blood sugar monitoring device where people deposit blood samples on a strip and put it into the reader. Then the reader just takes care of it.”

The team also hopes the device will be useful for measuring platelet strength in other areas of medicine, such as measuring how blood-thinning medications like aspirin or Plavix affect different patients or helping neurosurgeons monitor patients for bleeding complications during surgery.

Co-authors include , a senior engineer at BD Biosciences who conducted this research while a UW mechanical engineering doctoral student; , a mechanical engineering doctoral student; Annie Smith, who was a mechanical engineering research scientist but is now a research scientist at Stasys; , the director of operations at Stasys who completed this work as a mechanical engineering postdoctoral fellow; , a scientist at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance who conducted this research as a research scientist at UW Medicine; , an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Harborview Medical Center; Xu Wang, a UW emergency medicine research scientist; and , a biostatistics research scientist. The microfluidics cards used in this study were made at the 聽at UW.

This research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award, the Coulter Foundation Translational Research Award, grants from the Life Science Discovery Fund, the Combined Funding Initiative, 天美影视传媒 CoMotion, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

###

For more information, contact Sniadecki at nsniadec@uw.edu.

Grant numbers: N66001-11-1-4129, LSDF-7434512, CMMI-1402673, UL1TR000423, KL2TR000421, EB001650

In some cases, there’s not much medics can do 鈥� a tourniquet won’t stop bleeding from a chest wound, and clotting treatments that require refrigerated or frozen blood products aren’t always available in the field.

That’s why 天美影视传媒 researchers have developed a new injectable polymer that strengthens blood clots, called PolySTAT. Administered in a simple shot, the polymer finds any unseen or internal injuries and starts working immediately.

The new polymer, described featured on the cover of the March 4 issue of could become a first line of defense in everything from battlefield injuries to rural car accidents to search and rescue missions deep in the mountains. It has been tested in rats, and researchers say it could reach human trials in five years.

In the initial study with rats, 100 percent of animals injected with PolySTAT survived a typically-lethal injury to the femoral artery. Only 20 percent of rats treated with a natural protein that helps blood clot survived.

“Most of the patients who die from bleeding die quickly,” said co-author , an assistant professor of who teamed with UW and to develop the macromolecule.

“This is something you could potentially put in a syringe inside a backpack and give right away to reduce blood loss and keep people alive long enough to make it to medical care,” he said.

The UW team was inspired by , a natural protein found in the body that helps strengthen blood clots.

Normally after an injury, platelets in the blood begin to congregate at the wound and form an initial barrier. Then a network of specialized fibers 鈥� 鈥� start weaving themselves throughout the clot to reinforce it.

If that scaffolding can’t withstand the pressure of blood pushing against it, the clot breaks apart and the patient keeps bleeding.

Both PolySTAT and factor XIII strengthen clots by binding fibrin strands together and adding “cross-links” that reinforce the latticework of that natural bandage.

“It’s like the difference between twisting two ropes together and weaving a net,” said co-author , the UW’s Robert J. Rushmer Professor of Bioengineering. “The cross-linked net is much stronger.”

But the synthetic PolySTAT offers greater protection against natural enzymes that dissolve blood clots. Those help during the healing process, but they work against doctors trying to keep patients from bleeding to death.

The enzymes, which cut fibrin strands, don’t target the synthetic PolySTAT bonds that are now integrated into the clot. That helps keep the blood clots intact in the critical hours after an injury.

“We were really testing how robust the clots were that formed,” said lead author , a UW doctoral student in bioengineering. “The animals injected with PolySTAT bled much less, and 100 percent of them lived.”

The synthetic polymer offers other advantages over conventional hemorrhaging treatments, said White, who also treats trauma patients at Harborview Medical Center.

Blood products are expensive, need careful storage, and they can grow bacteria or carry infectious diseases, he said. Plus, the hundreds of proteins introduced into a patient’s body during a transfusion can have unintended consequences.

After a traumatic injury, the body also begins to lose a protein that’s critical to forming fibrin. Once those levels drop below a certain threshold, existing treatments stop working and patients are more likely to die.

In the study, researchers found PolySTAT worked to strengthen clots even in cases where those fibrin building blocks were critically low.

The UW team also used a highly specific peptide that only binds to fibrin at the wound site. It does not bind to a precursor of fibrin that circulates throughout the body. That means PolySTAT shouldn’t form dangerous clots that can lead to a stroke or embolism.

Though the polymer’s initial safety profile looks promising, researchers said, next steps include testing on larger animals and additional screening to find out if it binds to any other unintended substances. They also plan to investigate its potential for treating hemophilia and for integration into bandages.

Other co-authors are Xu Wang in UW emergency medicine, Hua Wei in UW bioengineering, and in UW chemical engineering.

Funding came from the National Institutes of Health and its National Center for Advancing Translational Science, the UW , the Washington Research Foundation, an NIH-supported UW Bioengineering Cardiovascular Training Grant and discretionary funds from private donations.

For more information, contact Pun at spun@uw.edu or White at whiten4@uw.edu.