Magnetic Separation of Sepsis Pathogen Out of Infected Blood

March 26, 2009

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Filed under: Critical Care , Medicine , Surgery

Medgadget.com - San Francisco,CA,USA

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A team of investigators in Boston is developing an interesting new approach to

tackle septicemia. By physically separating the pathogen from the blood, the

researchers at Children's Hospital Boston believe that might open new frontiers

in our fight against this pernicious and deadly problem. The new system uses

specialty magnetic microbeads that attach themselves to bacteria and a magnetic

field gradient to separate the junk from the good stuff in separate stages.

From an abstract in Lab on a Chip:

Immunomagnetic microbeads were modified to create magnetic opsonins that were

used to cleanse flowing human whole blood of Candida albicans fungi, a leading

cause of sepsis-related deaths. The micromagnetic–microfluidic blood cleansing

device generates magnetic field gradients across vertically stacked channels to

enable continuous and high throughput separation of fungi from flowing whole

blood. A multiplexed version of the device containing four parallel channels

achieved over 80% clearance of fungi from contaminated blood at a flow rate of

20 mL/h in a single pass, a rate 1000 times faster than a previously described

prototype micromagnetic–microfluidic cell separation system. These results

provide the first proof-of-principle that a multiplexed

micromagnetic–microfluidic separation system can be used to cleanse pathogens

from flowing human blood at a rate and separation efficiency that is relevant

for clinical applications.

Press release: A fast magnetic fix for sepsis? ...

Article in Lab on a Chip: Micromagnetic-microfluidic blood cleansing device

Flashbacks: Manipulating Cellular Signaling with Magnetic Fields ; Sepsis

Microfilter Being Developed

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