Here in Canada, when a woman starts to bleed heavily following birth, she is often the recipient of a life-saving blood transfusion. This is not an option for women in in low-resource settings and without affordable and effective alternatives, many women die from post-partum hemorrhaging. Bowen Island resident and UBC researcher Dr. Christian Kastrup is working to change that by developing “self-propelling treatments” that travel against the flow of blood and act at the source of the bleeding.
“There are lots of drugs out there that help to create blood clots, but severe internal bleeding tends to push those agents out with the flow of blood,” says Dr. Kastrup. “We’ve been developing different products to solve this problem. For example we’ve created a gauze that could be put near the affected area that has an agent on it that would bubble and fizz like an antacid tablet, and propel the clotting mechanism to the source of the bleeding.”
Dr. Kastrup says that he has had a longstanding interest in blood coagulation, but this project began roughly five years ago after he learned about the problem of post-partum hemmorage in low-resource settings. He points to South Sudan, where the post-partum mortality rate is 1 in 20, largely because of hemorrhaging.
Supported by a funding award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, Dr. Kastrup and his team team at UBC’s Michael Smith Laboratories are testing the feasibility and safety of their ideas and working towards developing a clinical trial. He says he hopes to these products are available to help women around the world within two years time.
