Humanity’s quest to filter blood in patients with ongoing sepsis has no limits. All previous attempts have failed. But here’s an update on the technology we covered last year, when we reported about a new device developed at Harvard’s Wyss Institute that filters pathogens from whole blood. It was designed to fight sepsis and the underlying technology worked thanks to a proprietary genetically engineered protein called FcMBL that sticks to all kinds of viruses, fungi, bacteria, as well as the toxins they excrete. Millions of these proteins were attached to magnetic beads and the compounds injected into blood. The blood is then extracted and passed through a machine that used a magnet to draw the beads along with the FcMBL proteins and any toxins or pathogens on them.

Now the team has gotten rid of the idea of injecting the magnetic beads, which makes it considerably safer and easier to get through regulatory approval. Instead, blood is passed through filters used in dialysis machines with the FcMBL protein attached to the filters. These filters are already FDA approved for dialysis and in studies with small animals the technology removed 99% of E. coli and S. aureus from whole blood. Now they’ll try it with large animals before trying out on humans.

Here’s a Wyss Institute video about the technology:

Flashback: Artificial Biospleen Cleans Blood with Magnets (VIDEO)…

Study in journal Biomaterials: Improved treatment of systemic blood infections using antibiotics with extracorporeal opsonin hemoadsorption…

Source: Wyss Institute…

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