Development of a novel reactor for removing Heparin during extracorporeal procedures
Date
2008-09-17T13:17:22Z
Authors
Varghese, Manju Sunil
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Abstract
Heparin administration during extracorporeal procedures such as kidney dialysis and
heart surgeries is a challenging problem, as under heparinisation leads to clotting and
over heparinisation may cause excessive bleeding complications. Various reactor
designs including the use of heparinase and poly-L-lysine.HBr hollow fiber have been
proposed, however none of them have been clinically approved yet.
This work presents the possibility of designing a packed bed reactor with poly-Llysine/
alginate beads. The poly-L-lysine/alginate beads have been used widely in
fields of microencapsulation of cells and can be made using techniques such as the
Initech encapsulation and layer by layer approach. In some cases ginipin has been
used for microcapsule preparations to provide stronger cross linking. In this study, the
poly-L-lysine beads are made using the encapsulation procedure patented by Chang18
(1992). Batch experiments, using saline, fetal calf serum and blood were performed
to investigate the efficiency of the beads. The absorption of heparin was determined to
be a first order absorption process and fits the Freundlich Isotherm. The beads were
determined to be relatively safe in blood. The absorption of heparin was linked to the
poly-L-lysine content in the membrane. Thus the rate of the amount of heparin
absorbed could be increased by increasing the membrane thickness or by increasing
the number of poly-L-lysine/alginate beads. The results were used to investigate the
feasibility of using a packed bed reactor for the absorption process by adjusting the
specifications of the reactor and analysing simple flow models.
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