I-Corps: Highly portable hemodialysis enabled by ultrathin silicon membranes

在美国，急性肾衰竭占所有内科和外科住院的5%，但并非所有医院都提供急性透析。低成本的便携式系统将允许更多的医院提供这些紧急治疗。 拟议的项目旨在开发一种便携式血液透析系统，用于急性肾脏替代疗法，以人类治疗所需的速度清除毒素。该团队打算通过引入小型便携式透析进入市场，该透析由应用于非卧床透析和移动的家庭透析分析的高效硅纳米膜实现。高膜渗透性是制造小型血液透析装置的关键。简单地说，膜清除毒素的效率越高，实现给定清除所需的膜面积就越小，清除所需的装置形式就越小。该团队推出了一种新的膜-多孔纳米晶硅（pnc-Si）。该膜材料具有高度可制造性，具有孔径控制（5 nm至100 nm）、分子级薄度（50 nm）和足够的强度以支持大气压或更大的压差。由于分子尺度的薄，小分子扩散和水力渗透性都是3至4个数量级的高与pnc-Si比传统的透析膜。所提出的膜的渗透性也比文献中报道的“纳米槽”膜高出几个数量级，因为其有利于植入式血液透析系统。该团队还表明，硅纳米膜有能力分离大小仅相差几纳米的物种，并根据血液透析的需要将中等重量的蛋白质毒素分子与血清白蛋白特异性分离。

Acute Renal Failure complicates 5% of all medical and surgical hospital admissions in the United States, but not all hospitals provide acute dialysis. Low cost portable systems will allow more hospitals to provide these emergency treatments. The proposed project aims to develop a portable hemodialysis system for acute renal replacement therapy that clears toxins at rates required for human treatments. The team intends to enter the market place by introducing a small format portable dialysis enabled by highly efficient silicon nanomembranes applied to ambulatory dialysis and mobile home dialysis analysis. High membrane permeability is the key to creating a small-format hemodialysis device. Simply, the greater the efficiency of a membrane in clearing toxins, the less membrane area is necessary to achieve a given clearance and the smaller the device format required for clearance. The team has introduced a new class of membrane - ultrathin porous nanocrystalline silicon (pnc-Si). This membrane material is highly manufacturable with pore size control (5 nm to 100 nm), molecular scale thinness (50 nm), and enough strength to support an atmosphere or more of differential pressure. Because of the molecular-scale thinness, both small molecule diffusion and hydraulic permeability are 3 to 4 orders of magnitude higher with pnc-Si than conventional dialysis membranes. The proposed membranes are also orders of magnitude more permeable than 'nanoslot' membranes reported in the literature as having benefit for an implantable hemodialysis system. The team has also shown that the silicon nanomembranes have the ability to separate species that differ by only a few nanometers in size and specifically separate molecules middle weight protein toxins from serum albumin as required in hemodialysis.