A potential treatment for a serious clotting condition that can strike patients who receive heparin to treat or prevent blood clots may lie within reach by elucidating the structure of the protein complex at its root, according to a research collaboration by the Cines Lab and the Greene Lab. The team’s paper, "Atomic description of the immune complex involved in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia," was published in Nature Communications and establishes that an antibody that disrupts the complex may have therapeutic potential. Almost 12 million patients are given heparin annually either as treatment for clots or to prevent clot formation, for example, during cardiopulmonary bypass surgery.
Read the Department of Communications news release.