TPU: Membranes for blood purification

2023: Product Announcement

The first fully Russian mobile filters for purifying donated blood have been developed and created at Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU). The key element of the filter is membranes. Passing blood through such mobile filters is an alternative way to clean it. Tomsk membranes operate 40% more efficiently than Japanese analogues, which are recognized as a standard in the field of cleaning, the press service of the university said at the end of August 2023.

Mobile filters are especially relevant for emergency blood transfusions in difficult "field" conditions: in mountainous areas, in hard-to-reach northern areas, during autonomous expeditions. At the same time, blood purification is carried out directly during its collection - a filtering device is attached to a venous catheter. Membranes are created from layered special composites having a microporous structure. White blood cells, colliding with the membrane, are delayed by a smaller pore size and electric charge on the surface of the fibers.

Russian mobile filters for cleaning donated blood

Leukofiltration is a mandatory procedure to improve the safety of transfusion blood, since donor white blood cells can cause unwanted immune reactions. At blood transfusion stations, donor blood undergoes special treatment using special devices. This is usually an expensive and long enough procedure.

The technology developed at TPU with a smaller thickness and fewer layers filters blood with the same efficiency as imported products, said Evgeny Bolbasov, project manager, senior researcher at the Research School of Chemical and Biomedical Technologies. He added that the thinner the size of the filter element, the more blood it passes, and this affects the performance of the filter and the speed of its operation.^[1]

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