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Sepsis can quickly overwhelm the defenses of premature newborns and children with weakened immune systems. To augment antibiotics, researchers in the Vascular Biology Program at Children’s Hospital Boston have come up with a first line of defense—a device using magnetism to quickly pull pathogens from the blood.
The blood-cleansing system, developed by Chong Wing Yung, PhD,in the laboratory of Don Ingber, MD, PhD, would work like this: Tiny magnetic beads, pre-coated with antibodies against specific pathogens (like Candida albicans), are added to the patient’s blood. The blood is then run through a microfluidic device in which two liquid flow streams run side by side without mixing—one containing blood, the other a saline-based collection fluid. A magnet then pulls the beads, which have bound to the pathogens, into the collection fluid, which is discarded. The cleansed blood is then returned to the patient.
Tested with human blood, a prototype with four collection modules achieved over 80 percent clearance of fungi in a single pass, at an efficiency that would be feasible for clinical application. Dr. Yung and Dr. Ingber estimate that a system with hundreds of modules could cleanse an infant’s blood within several hours. With collaborators including Mark Puder, MD, PhD, and Jay Wilson, MD, from the Department of Surgery, the team recently won a $500,000 grant from the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology to test the device in animals.
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