EAGER: Carbide Derived Carbons with Pore Structure and Surface Chemistry Designed for Selective Adsorption of Proteins

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NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: Severe sepsis kills about the same number of people per day as lung or breast cancer. Since the inflammatory response in case of sepsis is driven by cytokines, their removal from blood brings under control the unregulated pro- and anti-inflammatory processes driving sepsis. Unlike dialysis and filtration, not to mention drug-based therapy, adsorption can remove cytokines from blood plasma without introducing any other substances into the blood. The proposed research is expected to provide a tool for better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms governing the adsorption of cytokines by carbon materials. The use of the results of this study in medicine may save the lives of people suffering from autoimmune diseases, severe sepsis, and multiple organ failure. This program will facilitate an interdisciplinary international cooperation between the research groups working on nanoporous carbons in Philadelphia (U.S.) and Brighton (U.K.). Exchange with the group of Professor S. Mikhalovsky, University of Brighton, will allow graduate and undergraduate students from Drexel University to obtain international experience. TECHNICAL DETAILS: The goal of this research is to investigate the effect of pore size, pore shape, particle size, and surface termination of carbide-derived carbons (CDC) on adsorption of cytokines and other proteins. In the CDC process, the metal is extracted from a binary or ternary carbide or carbonitride ceramic by halogens. Therefore, the structure of the carbon can be templated by the carbide structure, with an opportunity for further tuning by controlling the temperature and composition of the environment. Preliminary testing at the University of Brighton has demonstrated that CDC samples significantly outperform the best commercial carbons in the efficiency of protein adsorption. This important breakthrough warrants conducting further studies immediately to explore if a truly transformational approach to sepsis can be carried out. Experimental studies will be performed on cytokine (interleukins and TNF-alpha) adsorption kinetics as a function of the pore size (5-50 nm) by using CDC produced from different precursors. The effects of surface functional groups on the interaction of proteins with the carbon will be experimentally investigated. The PI will determine the conditions for selective adsorption of specific proteins and develop materials with the surface termination and pore size tuned to maximize adsorption capacity and kinetics of adsorption for selected proteins.