Advanced surfaces for next generation hemodialysis technology.

虽然它对维持生命是有效的，但现代血液透析有几个重要的局限性。首先，它是极其昂贵的-每个病人的平均费用超过每年120，000美元，如果发生并发症，可能会大大增加。其次，它与非常高的死亡率相关-20岁血液透析患者的预期寿命与75岁肾功能正常的人的预期寿命相似。第三，血液透析治疗会导致生活质量极差--血液透析患者平均会用十年的血液透析寿命换取六年的正常健康寿命。第四，在临床上没有诊断透析有效性的方法-只有两种尿毒症毒素使用质谱方法进行评估。第五，尽管尿毒症毒素被认为是进行性肾功能障碍的贡献者，但没有已知的方法用于靶向这些分子以将它们从患者血液中去除。第六，膜方法永远不会清除这些毒素中的一些，因为它们与蛋白质密切相关。我们需要推进透析技术，以克服与血液透析相关的患者、医疗保健系统和环境损害的巨大成本。 为了克服这一问题，将使用最先进的技术来设计新的聚合物改性表面，以结合和去除血液中的尿毒症毒素-与蛋白质竞争作为这些毒素的人工结合剂。这将通过使用聚合物和生物聚合物结构形成人工结合口袋来实现，其唯一目的是开发结合尿毒症毒素的可重复使用的表面。昂斯沃思实验室在这种方法所需的表面上构建聚合物方面拥有丰富的经验。我们将把这一先进技术应用于离线诊断、在线诊断领域的新产品，并通过增强现有的膜透析技术来提高治疗潜力。

Although it is effective for sustaining life, modern hemodialysis has several important limitations. First, it is extremely expensive - average costs per patient exceed $120,000 per year, and may be substantially higher if complications occur. Second, it is associated with very high mortality - life expectancy for a 20-year-old hemodialysis patient is similar to life expectancy for a 75-year-old person with normal kidney function. Third, hemodialysis treatment leads to exceedingly poor quality of life - the average hemodialysis patient would trade ten years of life on hemodialysis for six years of life in normal health. Fourth, there are no means of diagnosing effectiveness of dialysis in the clinic - only two uremic toxins are evaluated using mass spectroscopy approaches. Fifth, although uremic toxins are recognized as contributors to progressive kidney dysfunction there are no known approaches for targeting these molecules to remove them from patient blood. Sixth, membrane approaches will never clear some of these toxins as they become closely associated with proteins. We need to advance dialysis technology to overcome significant costs to patients, the healthcare system, and environmental damage associated to hemodialysis. To overcome this problem state-of-the-art techniques for engineering new polymer-modified surfaces will be used to bind and remove uremic toxins from blood - competing with proteins as artificial binders of these toxins. This will be accomplished by forming artificial binding pockets using both polymer and biopolymer architectures for the sole purpose of developing reusable surfaces that bind uremic toxins. Unsworth labs has extensive experience in building polymers on surfaces as required for this approach. We will move this advanced technology to new products in the area of off-line diagnostics, in-line diagnostics, and increased therapeutic potential by augmenting existing membrane dialysis technology.