SBIR Phase II: Rapid Blood Cleansing Device to Combat Infection

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will be the development of a fluidic platform for selective bacterial and endotoxin removal from blood. This technology can potentially serve as a novel blood cleansing therapeutic for diseases such as sepsis. Sepsis is a life-threatening complication caused by infection. In the U.S., sepsis afflicts over 1.6 million annually and has an associated mortality rate ranging from 25-50%. Realization of this fluidic platform technology will address the broader societal needs of inhibiting sepsis progression and developing more specific and effective therapeutics for the treatment of human disease. Commercialization and implementation of the proposed innovation may reduce the hospital length of stay associated with sepsis, decrease sepsis morbidity and mortality rates, and potentially reduce the annual U.S. expenditure for sepsis. Scientific and technological understanding generated by this work has additional applications for other blood-borne diseases, such as HIV, leukemia, and Lyme disease. Ultimately, this technology will revolutionize life science research through inertial-based fluidic platform use, enabling new discoveries in cell/particle focusing phenomena and interactions that have profound implications for elucidating inertial focusing mechanisms and for the development of novel platform technologies. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project proposes a novel approach to address the problem of sepsis through the direct removal of pathogens and associated toxins from circulation. Sepsis is the leading cause of death of the critically ill in the United States, costing over $24 Billion in treatment annually. The primary treatment for sepsis is system antibiotic administration, which is failing due to the rise of drug resistance and new, emerging pathogens. The research objectives of this project will result in an easy to use, efficient, and cost-effective fluidic platform for separation and removal of bacteria and associated toxins from circulation. This will facilitate the broad use of inertial-based fluidic platforms as research tools and for clinical applications, such as sepsis. The proposed research will 1) optimize fluidic platform design for clinical application, economical use, and workflow efficiency, 2) demonstrate efficient fluidic platform-mediated bacteria and endotoxin capture, and 3) confirm the biological benefits of the fluidic platform technology using a validated animal model of sepsis. Successful completion of these studies will demonstrate the positive biological consequences of direct pathogen and toxin removal from circulation and establish the commercial viability of the fluidic platform technology. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.