Veterinary Apheresis Service UK

19/06/2025

We've been quiet on social media, however there is lots of work behind the scenes at VAS currently. The start of the equine sporting season gives us chance to catch a breath on the equine side, but its been truly joyful to follow the season and see some past patients out back competing at the top of their game. It brings back the very reason that VAS was set up for after founder Jenny felt that there was no place to turn for a "course" of prp with known content, which she felt she wanted to access for her own event horse with a stifle injury. It takes a huge team effort to treat these horses of which we feel truly privileged to have been a part.
This has meant some extra time in small animal clinic and a focus on canines for a while. We've treated a wide variety of patients from apheresis treatment of racing greyhounds with tendon injuries to treatment of early onset elbow and shoulder djd in cockapoos via our ESTAR tropovet technology for smaller patients. All are doing well and we look forward to following their progress.
Then the most exciting update thanks to the support and interest from Emily Clarke, a researcher at Liverpool University after we met at BEVA last year, alongside the trust and generosity of some of our past patients has been planning the study and obtaining consent for surplus sample inclusion so we can truly look to put more detailed data into our service. We already record whole blood and prp platelet, white cell and red cell content, so every patient gets a bespoke result and recommendation for treatment volumes and regimes, however extracellular vesicles are of current interest in the regenerative medicine field and have been researched recently particularly in reference to preserved PRP and stem cell activity. Real data as to the EV content of autologous PRP is often not known as the PRP is used at the time, requires specialist testing and is not analysed. We intend to change that for our offering and very much look forward to putting these numbers into the developement of our service longer term, and bring to the forefront a true understandng of frozen prp content and its place in the biologics catalogue.

17/04/2025

Jessie ❤️

17/04/2025

Meet Jessie one of todays two canine apheresis patients. Jessie is 8 years old now and has just started to show a recurrence of lameness after anconeal process removal followed by a course of prp 3 years ago. This is her trotting up this week. Jessie’s mom is a vet nurse and although she knows that medication for arthritis is likely to be needed soon, as Jessie is so full of life she decided to try a follow up course of prp. Jessie had 90ml of prp collected today and made into 14 doses, she had 2 billion platelets injected into her elbow post a 50 minute apheresis procedure under light GA and trotted off home to her best friend Finn this evening. We’re looking forward to looking after Jessie and seeing her ongoing progress. Photos to follow ❤️

21/03/2025

Road trip across the sea for VAS this weekend. A special one for a fellow vet with an awesome eventing pony in Northern Ireland. She has a mild bilateral fetlock ni**le that will benefit from biologics to get her back jumping on springs. She was cheeky but fabulous for her conscious collection - three vets in charge is always going to be good fun. Her results indicate great prp with a concentration factor of 8x and a final concentration of 1 billion platelets per ml. We look forward to following her ongoing progress 🙂🙂

19/02/2025

It was a touch chilly today but lovely to work with beautiful Rico to generate a bank of prp to treat his carpii associated lameness. Rico is a repeat customer having undergone successful rehab for previous stifle pathology, that included prp treatment. He was a superstar today for his hour long unsedated stable side collection. We also had chance to play fetch with the very handsome Murphy (German shepherd) who has now decided to forgive us after he visited us for some minor unassociated with prp surgery last week. We are really happy to see that he also remains sound on his elbow post two apheresis generated prp treatments that he received one year apart for mild ED. His last injection was given in august last year ❤️

05/02/2025

Meet the very lovely Santi ❤️. We met Santi and his dedicated owner today to perform his stable side prp collection. Santi has some ongoing ni**les under management, we attended to collect prp to treat his bilateral stifle issues today. Our job encompasses running a seamless apheresis event, providing a dose for the day as needed but also a bank of frozen prp/lysate for ongoing treatments to make prp therapy more accessible for patients with ongoing management needs. The bonus is we get to cuddle lots of our patients when appropriate to help keep the process as effective and relaxing as possible. Santi was well up for this during his platelet harvest ❤️

09/01/2025

Chilly day on session today helping to treat three horses 🙂. Very grateful to for the timely delivery of our new winter uniform 🙂

15/11/2024

VAS vêt Jenny finds herself at the other side of the needle this week. Long term knee pain after a traumatic knee injury in 2019. OA basically and much the same as some of our equine patients we’ve treated with prp. So we attended the stem cell clinic in Stafford and received a prp injection administered by Ansar Mahmood a frankly awe inspiring clinician. Trauma orthopaedic surgeon within the nhs but with huge belief and enthusiasm in biologics especially prp. Lots of nerdy conversation about ideal prp content, a superb comparative learning opportunity and a seamless expertly delivered process. We use a centrifuge system at VAS as a back up to apheresis and for smaller patients. We enjoyed sharing our mutual positive findings using estar médicals tropocells/tropovet technology.

03/10/2024

Meet a VAS superstar - Zeus the stunning Friesian ❤️. Zeus has progressed through a careful treatment and rehabilitation plan that has involved a course of PRP to manage à bilateral stifle problem that began in 2022. He returned for the collection of a further bank of PRP this week. He was a gem through a 70 minute collection to yield 320ml of prp. He enjoyed listening to alphonso the apheresis machine who is talkative (in a very soft series of clicks and whirrs until his final beepy happy dance on completion). To see Zeus in such superb shape and being part of the ongoing plan to keep him as comfortable as possible is an absolute pleasure and completely what VAS is all about. ❤️

13/09/2024

We’re in print after our abstract delivery at beva Congress in Liverpool yesterday 🙂

Click on the article title to read more.

11/09/2024

We’ve headed to BEVA Congress in Liverpool today - ready to present our initial cohort abstract: Apheresis as a method to produce multiple doses of leucoreduced platelet rich plasma for autologous regenerative medicine use in 84 UK riding horses with naturally occurring injury.
14.54 tomorrow
It’s great to be here and as always it’s thanks to the support of my co authors Dr Anne Hale and Katie Brickman.
Here’s hoping I can do the service justice and the abstract is well received. However it goes it feels like a nice achievement to be here to illustrate nearly 3 years of VAS helping some fabulous horses recover from injury ❤️

07/08/2024

Prp therapy reaching a few patients this week. A repeat treatment for Murphy the German shepherd who was first treated a year ago for elbow dysplasia. He’s been sound with no requirement for medication for 12 months (he was on pain relief injections regularly prior to his prp). His very vigilant owners and vet noted a mild lameness returning (which unfortunately is inevitable with this condition) so he received a further treatment this week. He’s still speaking to us, and is trotting around very happily post his injection so we consider that a success all round ❤️. Then we’ve been out on the road collecting from three gorgeous equine patients today. As always their stories and partnership with their owners really helps motivate our ongoing work. These horses mean the world to their owners and we feel privileged to work with them as a team effort to get them back doing what they love for as long as possible. The bonus to the week was seeing quite a few of our past patients back in sound work at the other side of treatment and rehab 🙂