SELECTIVE FILTRATION OF PLASMA PROTEINS

治疗性血浆置换术在临床上有重要应用 治疗各种免疫和代谢疾病， 在治疗自身免疫性疾病， 类风湿关节炎 当前疗法的广泛使用， 包括患者血浆的移除和随后的置换， 由于成本高和潜在的并发症， 使用外源性置换液，例如合并血浆， 回到病人身上。 选择性蛋白质过滤可以提供 用于分离血浆的免疫球蛋白级分的廉价手段， 它通常包含致病物种， 这部分，然后可以安全地返回给病人。 尽管已经开发出了商业膜， 用于分离白蛋白和IgG的足够性质， 这种选择性蛋白质分离通常是不成功的。 这种失败被归因于许多不同的现象，但 本体和膜运输之间的耦合使得难以 以确定这些现象中的哪一种实际上控制着通量， 临床设备中的分离效率。 我们的工作目标是 确定确定滤液通量和蛋白质的机制 分离效率，使用协调的实验和理论 程序. 这涉及旨在分离和表征 数据采集条件下的重要物理现象 后续分析相对简单。 实验 还提出了获得准确的数据流量和蛋白质分离 在实验室规模的交叉流过滤器中使用各种 具有非常不同的物理和化学性质的聚合物膜 特性. 从这些研究中获得的物理见解将 适用于临床/工业器械的分析， 白蛋白和IgG的选择性过滤。

Therapeutic plasmapheresis has important clinical applications in the treatment of a variety of immunologic and metabolic disorders, with particular benefits in the treatment of autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. Widespread use of the current therapy, which involves removal and subsequent replacement of the patient's plasma, is limited by the large cost and potential complications associated with the use of exogenous replacement fluids, e.g. pooled plasma, that are returned to the patient. Selective protein filtration can provide an inexpensive means for separating the immunoglobulin fraction of plasma, which generally contains the pathogenic species, from the albumin fraction, which can then be safely returned to the patient. Although commercial membranes have been developed that appear to have adequate properties for separating albumin and IgG, previous attempts at this selective protein separation have generally been unsuccessful. This failure has been attributed to a number of different phenomena, but the coupling between bulk and membrane transport has made it difficult to determine which of these phenomena actually govern flux and separation efficiency in clinical devices. The objective of our work is to identify the mechanisms that determine filtrate flux and protein separation efficiency using a coordinated experimental and theoretical program. This involves experiments designed to isolate and characterize the important physical phenomena under conditions where data acquisition and subsequent analysis are relatively straightforward. Experiments are also proposed to obtain accurate data for flux and protein separation efficiency in a laboratory scale cross-flow filter using a variety of polymeric membranes with very different physical and chemical properties. The physical insight obtained from these studies will then be applied to the analysis of clinical/industrial devices for the selective filtration of albumin and IgG.