Slow-healing wounds benefit considerably from treatment with platelet-rich plasma (PrP). The drawback of using PrP is its laborious preparation, which requires expensive technical equipment (centrifuges) and well-trained personnel.
Methods: The authors' new method overcomes these issues and provides the practitioner with an innovative tool to freshly prepare a platelet mediator mix with PrP's known biological activities, but is much simpler to obtain. This is achieved by employing the sedimentation of a blood sample at regular gravity (no centrifuge necessary) in the presence of an anti-coagulant and a sedimentation accelerator. Thereafter, the supernatant containing the platelets is concentrated on a unique filter, which causes these platelets to release their mediators (different biologically active molecules resembling the substance mix that is released by the platelets upon degranulation). This solution is eluted from the filter, providing a sterile-filtered, enriched fraction of biologically active mediators (TGF-β, PDGF, IGF-1, etc.), most of which are active in wound healing disorders.
Results: This preparation triggers in-vitro proliferation of fibroblasts and osteoblasts, the secretion of IL-6 by osteoblasts, and differentiation of fibroblasts into cells with an endothelial morphology resembling cells during angiogenesis.
Conclusion: By providing the practioner a sterile concentrate of a whole range of autologous platelet mediators within 1 hour, this new method has the potency to become a substitute of PrP in wound-healing therapy. PMC (platelet mediator concentrate) eases the manufacturing of such preparations, thereby making them not only more widely applicable, but also reducing treatment costs.