PDF icon Download PDF
Open Access
CC BY 4.0 · Semin Thromb Hemost 2024; 50(04): 537-551
DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-1774796
Review Article

A Perspective on How Fibrinaloid Microclots and Platelet Pathology May be Applied in Clinical Investigations

Etheresia Pretorius 
1   Department of Physiological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, Matieland, South Africa
2   Department of Biochemistry and Systems Biology, Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
,
Douglas B. Kell 
1   Department of Physiological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, Matieland, South Africa
2   Department of Biochemistry and Systems Biology, Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
3   The Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark
› Author Affiliations
Funding D.B.K. would like to thank the Novo Nordisk Foundation (grant NNF20CC0035580) and Balvi Research Foundation and funding. E.P. would like to thank the NRF of South Africa (grant number 142142), SA MRC (self-initiated research [SIR] grant), Balvi Research Foundation, and Polybio Research Foundation for funding. The content and findings reported and illustrated are the sole deduction, view, and responsibility of the researchers and do not reflect the official position and sentiments of the funders.
› Further Information
  Permissions and Reprints
Preview

Abstract

Microscopy imaging has enabled us to establish the presence of fibrin(ogen) amyloid (fibrinaloid) microclots in a range of chronic, inflammatory diseases. Microclots may also be induced by a variety of purified substances, often at very low concentrations. These molecules include bacterial inflammagens, serum amyloid A, and the S1 spike protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Here, we explore which of the properties of these microclots might be used to contribute to differential clinical diagnoses and prognoses of the various diseases with which they may be associated. Such properties include distributions in their size and number before and after the addition of exogenous thrombin, their spectral properties, the diameter of the fibers of which they are made, their resistance to proteolysis by various proteases, their cross-seeding ability, and the concentration dependence of their ability to bind small molecules including fluorogenic amyloid stains. Measuring these microclot parameters, together with microscopy imaging itself, along with methodologies like proteomics and imaging flow cytometry, as well as more conventional assays such as those for cytokines, might open up the possibility of a much finer use of these microclot properties in generative methods for a future where personalized medicine will be standard procedures in all clotting pathology disease diagnoses.

Keywords

microclots - platelet hyperactivation - inflammatory molecules - vascular complications

Conflict of Interest

E.P. is a director of Biocode Technologies, a Stellenbosch University start-up company. D.B.K. has no interests to declare.




Publication History

Article published online:
25 September 2023

© 2023. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Thieme Medical Publishers, Inc.
333 Seventh Avenue, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA