Dominik Obrist's KTH Solid Mechanics Seminar “Biomechanics of Coronary Microvascular Obstruction”

Dominik Obrist 2026-01-29.pdf (pdf 196 kB)

Abstract. Coronary microvascular obstruction (MVO) is an injury of the myocardial microcirculation. It typically follows a heart attack after successful recanalization of the blocked coronary artery (primary occlusion). MVO leads to under-perfusion of the affected tissue and has a negative impact on patient outcome. It may be caused by microthrombi (debris from the primary occlusion) embolizing vessels of less than 200µm diameter. Presently, there is a lack of effective methods for the diagnosis and therapy of MVO. For the systematic study of the biomechanics MVO and to develop diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, we devised a multi-scale in vitro model of the coronary circulation. It comprises a microfluidic chip modeling vessels with diameters ranging from 700 to 50µm. MVO is induced by injecting human microthrombi (~200µm) into the microfluidic chip where they randomly distribute and occlude some of the microchannels. We will discuss the transport and distribution of the microthrombi in the microfluidic chip and will characterize their effect on the perfusion and the delivery of thrombolytic drugs toward the microthrombi. We will study the dynamics of thrombolysis in the chip and will show that microthrombi can be resolved after a primary incubation time of 90 seconds at high drug concentration over the course of 20 minutes