Irish research has revealed new information about how blood clots are formed during the process of wound healing.

Researchers from RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences examined the behaviour of platelets at a wound site. They looked specifically at the platelets’ ability to sense where within a blood clot they are and remodel their surroundings accordingly.

Platelets are key to initiating wound healing and the formation of blood clots (thrombus). Fibroblasts are connective tissue cells that are essential for the later stages of wound healing. Fibroblasts invade the clot that has been formed and produce vital proteins, including fibronectin, that then form a structural framework to build the new tissue needed to heal.

This new study suggests that platelets can also form a provisional fibronectin matrix in their surroundings, similar to what fibroblasts do in the later stages of wound healing. This has potential implications for how the integrity of blood clots might be maintained during vascular repair.

“We have identified an additional unexpected role for the most prominent platelet adhesion receptor. Our results show that platelets not only form the clot but also can initiate its remodelling by erecting a fibrous scaffold. This finding challenges some existing paradigms in the field of wound healing, which is dominated by research on fibroblasts,” explained the study’s lead author, Dr Ingmar Schoen, from the RCSI’s School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences.

The researchers said that key to this was the use of super-resolution microscopy, which enables sharper images of structures inside or around cells to be captured and observed in vitro in a laboratory.

“Without super-resolution microscopy, this discovery would not have been possible,” Dr Schoen said.

However, the researchers added that observation of this platelet behaviour in a living organism (in vivo) will be required to further develop this finding.

The research was carried out in collaboration with researchers at ETH Zurich, Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg, University of Freiburg and University Hospital Zurich. It is published in the journal Science Advances and can be viewed here.