Abstract

Electrospinning technology is an experimentally verified tool for the generation of membranes with competing efficiency useful for leukodepletion filter, customarily used in blood banks to lessen the risks with blood transfusions. Even though a few electrospun polymers have been reported to be efficient leukodepletion filter membranes, poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) (EVAL) being one among, owe to their exceptional advantage of being electrospun from a non-toxic solvent like rubbing alcohol. Besides their excellent blood compatibility, EVAL membranes proffer a leukodepletion performance nearly as same as that of commercial leukodepletion filters. However, the role of various membrane parameters on the leukodepletion efficiency of electrospun EVAL membranes need to be disclosed in advance to their commercialization. Hence this study is an attempt to disclose the ability of electrospinning to being tuned towards the fabrication of filters with different membrane parameters including fiber diameter and pore diameter, with a typical example of EVAL. In addition, the impact of filter design upon the leukodepletion performance was also unveiled by comparing a symmetric filter where all the membranes were of uniform pores with that of an asymmetric filter where the pore sizes of upper and lower layer in the filter was different. The results of blood filtration experiments through the developed prototype filters underline the superiority of asymmetric filters over to symmetric one and, the asymmetric filters wherever the fiber diameter was 1.8 and 3 μm, offered rapid and excellent leukodepletion. Membranes with thinner fibers showed an increased flow resistance. The pore sizes of the membranes being 9 − 29 μm, larger than the size of blood cells, alludes to the direct adhesion of leukocytes to filter membranes as the major mechanism of leukocyte removal. Hence it is concluded that despite the suitability of electrospinning for fabrication of leukodepletion filter media, the use of nano-dimension fibers is not preferred for leukocyte adhesion filter when the material of choice is such a polymer with ideal surface chemistry, wettability and inherent ability for leukocyte binding.

摘要

静电纺丝技术是一种经过实验验证的工具，用于生成具有竞争效率的膜，可用于去除白细胞过滤器，通常用于血库以降低输血风险。尽管据报道有一些电纺聚合物是有效的白细胞去除滤膜，但聚（乙烯-共-乙烯醇）（EVAL）是其中之一，因为它们具有从无毒溶剂（如外用酒精）中静电纺丝的特殊优势。除了优异的血液相容性外，EVAL 膜还提供与商业白细胞去除过滤器几乎相同的白细胞去除性能。然而，各种膜参数对电纺 EVAL 膜的白细胞去除效率的作用需要在其商业化之前公开。因此，这项研究试图揭示静电纺丝的能力，以适应具有不同膜参数（包括纤维直径和孔径）的过滤器的制造，并具有典型的 EVAL 示例。此外，通过比较所有膜均具有均匀孔的对称过滤器与过滤器上层和下层孔径不同的非对称过滤器，还揭示了过滤器设计对白细胞去除性能的影响。通过开发的原型过滤器进行的血液过滤实验结果强调了非对称过滤器相对于对称过滤器的优越性，并且，无论纤维直径为 1.8 和 3 μm，非对称过滤器都能提供快速和出色的白细胞去除。具有较细纤维的膜表现出增加的流动阻力。膜的孔径为 9 - 29 μm，大于血细胞的大小，暗示白细胞直接粘附在滤膜上是白细胞去除的主要机制。Hence it is concluded that despite the suitability of electrospinning for fabrication of leukodepletion filter media, the use of nano-dimension fibers is not preferred for leukocyte adhesion filter when the material of choice is such a polymer with ideal surface chemistry, wettability and inherent ability for白细胞结合。