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Artificial Spleen Removes Ebola, HIV Viruses and Toxins From Blood Using Magnets September 15, 2014 18:35 BST

Harvard scientists have invented a new artificial spleen that is able to clear toxins, fungi and deadly pathogens such as Ebola from human blood, which could potentially save millions of lives.

Blood can be infected by many different types of organ infections as well as contaminated medical instruments such as IV lines and catheters.

When antibiotics are used to kill them, dying viruses release toxins in the blood that begin to multiply quickly, causing sepsis, a life-threatening condition whereby the immune system overreacts, causing blood clotting, organ damage and inflammation.

It can take days to identify which pathogen is responsible for infecting the blood but most of the time, the cause is not identified, while the onset of sepsis can be hours to days. Broad-spectrum antibiotics with sometimes devastating side effects are used and currently over eight million people die from the condition worldwide annually.

"Even with the best current treatments, sepsis patients are dying in intensive care units at least 30% of the time," said Dr Mike Super, senior staff scientist at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, which led the research. "We need a new approach."

"Sepsis is a major medical threat, which is increasing because of antibiotic resistance," said Donald Ingber, a professor of vascular biology at Harvard Medical School and the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital, as well as professor of bioengineering at SEAS.

"We're excited by the biospleen because it potentially provides a way to treat patients quickly without having to wait days to identify the source of infection and it works equally well with antibiotic-resistant organisms.

"We hope to move this towards human testing to advancing to large animal studies as quickly as possible."

Biospleens could be used in the future to treat patients suffering from viral diseases such as HIV and Ebola, where a person's survival depends on how quickly the amount of virus in the blood can be lowered to a negligible level.

The researchers plan to use pigs next to test their invention.