Josefine Tratwal (EPFL 2022)

miniMarrow

Platelet transfusions are the only way to prevent bleeding in patients suffering from diseases associated with low platelet counts, such as blood cancers. This may lead to chronic transfusion dependency, an extremely burdensome condition requiring up to several hospital visits per week.

Transfusions remain highly dependent on donor availability as well as on the short lifetime and short shelf-life of the product. The growing demand for platelet transfusions and the reduction in donations during extreme situations such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, places a high strain on blood banks where almost half of the demands represent blood cancer patients.
miniMarrow combines aspects of bioengineering and stem cell biology with hemato-oncology and transfusion medicine, to develop personalized platelet factories. Through its research, this disruptive entrepreneurial project aims to show the feasibility for generating biomaterial-assisted cell implants that can be scaled up to ultimately deliver platelets directly to the patient. This pioneering approach has the potential to drastically transform transfusion medicine and the quality-of-life of patients in diseases where platelet count is a major limitation.