PLANA™

The science under the hood

Platelets travel to every tissue and organ in the body. They react to changes in health status, disease progressions, and the on and off-target effects of a wide range of drugs. They are also easily obtained from patients and subjects in clinical trials.

This makes platelets the ideal biomarker for assessing efficacy and side effects.

Platelet function measurement is currently limited: point-of-care platelet function tests require expensive equipment at each clinical site and lack discriminatory power; whereas more sensitive platelet lab tests lack reproducibility and reliability, often require large volumes of patient blood, and need to be performed rapidly after blood draw in a specialist lab close to patients, which is not usually possible.

PLANA™ eliminates the compromise. It allows high-quality, clinically actionable and robust platelet function measurement to be performed anywhere by anyone without sacrificing data quality. For the first time, PLANA™ makes it possible to collect meaningful platelet function data in multi-centre clinical trials.

Blood samples and fluorescently labelled antibodies against markers of platelet activation (e.g. fibrinogen and P-selectin) are added to PLANA™ plates containing concentration gradients of freeze-dried platelet agonists (e.g. collagen, ADP and thrombin receptor stimulators) to provide full pharmacologic profiles. Our proprietary fix-freeze reagent is then added, and PLANA™ plates are frozen for up to 3 months.

PLANA™ plates are transferred to HaemAnalytica where flow cytometry analysis is performed.

The bespoke PLANA™ analysis software package plots data outputs and extracts parameters for easy patient function comparisons. Complex multi-parameter analysis enables phenotype group allocation and/or tracking of patient responses to medication.

PLANA™ was recently featured in PME Magazine's October 2025 issue. Discover how our platform is enabling "A new advent of clinical pathway management" in pharmaceutical development.