Congratulations to Dr Sakthivel Vaiyapuri

Wednesday, 22 May 2013

Dr Sakthivel Vaiyapuri

Dr Sakthivel Vaiyapuri from the School of Biological Sciences was recently awarded the Research Endowment Trust Fund Prize for best research output for the Faculty of Life Sciences.

Dr Vaiyapuri's work concerns platelets, the small blood cells that are important for blood clotting following an injury where they also play important roles in subsequent wound healing processes.

Inappropriate activation of platelets, however, under some conditions such as obesity and diabetes leads to the formation of blood clots within circulation, also known as arterial thrombosis. This may result in blocking blood flow to vital organs such as the brain, causing a stroke, or the heart, causing a heart attack.

Currently available medications to prevent or treat heart attack and stroke are ineffective in many patients, and are also associated with serious side effects such as bleeding. Thus, there is a need to develop better anti-thrombotic medication, and for this a detailed understanding of how platelet function is controlled in health and disease is essential.

The research of Dr Vaiyapuri was involved in recently discovered a fundamental new method by which platelets communicate with each other. Results showed that inhibition of this mechanism results in reduced platelet reactivity, which means they are less likely to trigger the blood to clot, and reduced thrombosis.

Although this study is still in its early stages, in the future it is hoped that this may lead to the design of better therapeutics to treat heart attacks and stroke. 

Read an interview with Dr Vaiyapuri, ‘in a lift' on the University's research website.

Dr Vaiyapuri's research paper 'Gap junctions and connexin hemichannels underpin hemostasis and thrombosis' was published in the journal Circulation.