New Blood Filtration Technology Improves Sepsis Treatment

U.S. and British researchers have created a blood filtration technology that could significantly improve the treatment of sepsis.

Researchers at Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA, USA) and the University of Brighton (UK) have developed a method for hemofiltration that uses activated carbon adsorbents with a precise pore size. The novel method uses selective etching of inorganic crystalline carbides, and the formation of pores is governed by a self-assembling process.

The new nano-engineered adsorbents outperform any other materials or methods in the efficiency of cytokine adsorption, in which intercellular chemical messenger proteins such as tumor necrosis factor and interleukins are released by white blood cells. The results are comparable only to highly specific antibody-antigen interactions. The researchers believe that the development of these materials could be a major step toward fighting severe sepsis. Similar materials could be used for the selective adsorption of other large organic molecules and possibly viruses for other bio-related or medical applications. The findings were reported in the December 2006 issue of the journal Biomaterials.

"The beauty and power of our technology is its ability to fine-tune the carbon microstructure and pore size to target a specific application,” said Dr. Yury Gogotsi, director of the Drexel Nanotechnology Institute and a co-inventor of the technology.

Until now, blood filters that used activated carbon had limited efficiency, since the carbon pores were too small and only a fraction of the surface area was available for adsorption. Even advanced activated carbon, with a surface area over 2000 m2/g, falls short when larger biologic molecules, such as proteins with dimensions of over 5-10 nm, need to be removed from the human body or biologic fluids.



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Drexel University
University of Brighton