Category: Science & Technology Posted: May 11, 2012 09:40AM Author: Guest_Jim_*

Whoever first had the idea for the lithography system used to produce modern integrated circuits, probably did not think their invention would be used to clean a person's blood. As reported by the American Institute of Physics, researchers at MIT and the National University of Singapore have created a device that cleans infections from the blood. The key was using margination, a natural phenomenon that separates parts of the blood.

As your blood flows through your blood vessels, white blood cells and bacteria move towards the wall of the vessel, while the red blood cells flow through the middle. The researchers decided to try making a device that replicates this effect. By etching microfluidic channels just 20 micrometers (millionths of a meter: m) by 20 m into a polymer chip, the researchers successfully removed at least 80% of the E. coli bacteria, yeast, and other inflammatory components from a blood sample.

Potentially this technology could be used to treat sepsis, a dangerous and systemic inflammatory response to blood infections. First small-scale in vivo animal tests have to be successful, but this is definitely a promising and interesting way to clean ones blood.

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Nanotechnology for Cleaning Blood