Electrical stimulation of whole blood for growth factor release and potential clinical implications

Abstract

Clinicians have increasingly applied platelet-rich plasma (PRP) for wound healing treatments. Topical treatments commonly require biochemical agents such as bovine thrombin to activate PRP ex vivo for clotting and growth factor release to facilitate healing upon application to the wound of interest. Recent studies have explored electrical stimulation as an alternative to bovine thrombin for PRP activation due to the former’s cost, workflow complexity and potentially significant side effects; however, both approaches require separating the PRP from whole blood (WB) prior to activation. Eliminating the separation (typically centrifugation) step would reduce the cost and duration of the clinical procedure, which may be critical in trauma and surgical applications. We hypothesize that electric pulses (EPs) can release growth factors from WB, as they do from PRP, without requiring centrifugation of WB into PRP. A pilot study for two donors demonstrates the potential for EP stimulated growth factor release from WB. This motivates future experiments assessing EP parameter optimization for WB activation and in vivo studies to determine the clinical benefits for topical treatments and, especially, for injections in orthopedic applications that already utilize non-treated/non-activated WB.