A biospleen device, developed by a team at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, could help clinicians battle sepsis more effectively, according to a Harvard Gazette report.
"Even with the best current treatments, sepsis patients are dying in intensive care units at least 30 percent of the time," Michael Super, PhD, a senior staff scientist at the Institute, told the Gazette. "We need a new approach."
So, Dr. Super and a team created the biospleen, modeled after the human spleen, which removes pathogens and dead cells from the blood through a series of blood channels. See this video for more information.
In lab tests on human blood, the device filtered blood faster than ever before, and 90 percent of key sepsis pathogens were removed, according to the report. In tests on animals, 90 percent of treated animals survived infections, compared to 14 percent of the control set animals.
The biospleen's creators hope to move forward with human testing and large animal studies quickly, according to the report.