The use of microfluidics in hemostasis: clinical diagnostics and biomimetic models of vascular injury.

Purpose Of Review: This article reviews the application of microfluidic technologies in hemostasis. The emphasis is on promising developments in devices for clinical applications and novel approaches to modeling complex hemodynamics.

Recent Findings: Microfluidics combined with micropatterning of prothrombotic substrates provides devices for measuring platelet function and coagulation with low blood volumes (∼100 μl) over a wide range of shear stresses.

Sources of variability in platelet accumulation on type 1 fibrillar collagen in microfluidic flow assays.

Microfluidic flow assays (MFA) that measure shear dependent platelet function have potential clinical applications in the diagnosis and treatment of bleeding and thrombotic disorders. As a step towards clinical application, the objective of this study was to measure how phenotypic and genetic factors, as well as experimental conditions, affect the variability of platelet accumulation on type 1 collagen within a MFA. Whole blood was perfused over type 1 fibrillar collagen at wall shear rates of 150, 300, 750 and 1500 s⁻¹ through four independent channels with a height of 50 µm and a width of 500 µm.

High content evaluation of shear dependent platelet function in a microfluidic flow assay.

The high blood volume requirements and low throughput of conventional flow assays for measuring platelet function are unsuitable for drug screening and clinical applications. In this study, we describe a microfluidic flow assay that uses 50 μL of whole blood to measure platelet function on ~300 micropatterned spots of collagen over a range of physiologic shear rates (50-920 s(-1)). Patterning of collagen thin films (CTF) was achieved using a novel hydrated microcontact stamping method.