Filtering out Sepsis
Sepsis, the medical term for blood poisoning, is a serious condition afflicting 20 million people worldwide each year and killing around 500,000 of them; a scale comparable to lung and breast cancers. But now a new type of filter, which can remove the chemical that causes sepsis from the blood, has been produced by the Biomedical Materials Research Group.
Sepsis is caused by the body's immune system overreacting to a microbe infection and releasing proteins called cytokines, which can cause a destructive chain reaction that leads to organ failure.
The team comprising Professor Sergey Mikhalovsky, Professor Andrew Lloyd, Dr Gary Phillips, Dr Susi Sandeman, Dr Carol Howell and Dr Lyuba Mikhalovsky in collaboration with clinical and industrial partners from across the UK has used the latest nanotechnology techniques to produce a carbon filter with pores that are small enough – around one hundredthousandth of a millimetre wide – to trap the specific biomolecules.
The patient's blood can be pumped through a machine containing the filter and back into the body. The filter can also remove endotoxins, which are damaging fragments left behind when bacteria that caused the original infection were attacked by the patient's immune system.
The filter has been created and tested and found to be very efficient at removing the cytokines and endotoxins. This team in the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, is working with the company Mast Carbon and two other universities and a hospital to commercialise this technology for the benefit of patients. The group's funding has included more than £1m from the EU and £750,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Carbon has been used as a substance to absorb poisons for hundreds of years, but its capacity to be used as a filter for removing small chemicals has only been made possible by advances in nano-engineering in recent decades.
The team at Brighton is also looking at other ways to use these carbon-based technologies. It sees potential use in the treatment of drug overdoses or poisoning as a 'carbon-based medicine' based on this technology as it is likely to absorb the chemicals more efficiently than current products. Another application is a special type of bandage which can absorb discharges and odours from wounds to improve performance over existing wound dressings.
Find out more
Visit the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences website.
