Dependence of Electric Pulse Mediated Growth Factor Release on the Platelet Rich Plasma Separation Method

Abstract

Platelet rich plasma (PRP) has been explored for multiple clinical applications, including dentistry, orthopedics, sports medicine, diabetic foot ulcers, and cosmetic treatments. Topical applications of PRP typically use thrombin to induce platelet activation, which is accompanied by growth factor release and clotting of the PRP, prior to treatment. Injectable PRP treatments typically use non-activated PRP under the assumption that collagen at the site of the injury mediates platelet activation to ensure growth factor release in vivo. Ex-vivo electrical stimulation of platelets is emerging as a robust, easy to use, instrument-based PRP activation technique to facilitate growth factor release with or without clotting, while providing tunability of growth factor release, clot mechanical properties (when desired), and serotonin release from the dense granules. This paper briefly reviews the key results of the electrical activation of platelets and demonstrates successful growth factor release by electrical ex-vivo stimulation without clotting for three types of PRP separated from whole blood using available commercial kits: Harvest, EmCyte and Eclipse. While these three types of PRP feature a wide range of platelet and red blood cell content compared to whole blood, we demonstrate that pulsed electric fields enable growth factor release for all these biological matrices generated using whole blood from four human donors. These experiments open opportunities for using electrically stimulated PRP with released growth factors without clotting for injectable platelet treatments in relevant clinical applications.