Division of Polymeric Medical Devices, Department of Medical Devices Engineering, Biomedical Technology Wing, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, Kerala, India.
Department of Chemistry, St. Albert's College (Autonomous), Ernakulam, Kerala, India.
J Biomater Sci Polym Ed. 2021 Apr;32(5):595-612. doi: 10.1080/09205063.2020.1851559. Epub 2020 Dec 6.
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.
静电纺丝技术是一种经过实验验证的工具，可用于生成具有竞争力的效率的膜，这些膜对于白细胞去除过滤器很有用，通常在血库中用于降低输血风险。尽管已经有一些报道称某些电纺聚合物是有效的白细胞去除过滤器膜，其中之一是聚乙烯醇共聚物（EVAL），因为它们具有从非毒性溶剂（如酒精）中电纺的特殊优势。除了出色的血液相容性外，EVAL 膜提供的白细胞去除性能几乎与商业白细胞去除过滤器相同。然而，在将其商业化之前，需要预先揭示各种膜参数对电纺 EVAL 膜的白细胞去除效率的影响。因此，本研究试图揭示静电纺丝在制造具有不同膜参数（包括纤维直径和孔径）的过滤器方面的能力，这是一个典型的 EVAL 示例。此外，通过比较具有均匀孔径的所有膜的对称过滤器和过滤器上下层孔径不同的不对称过滤器，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不对称过滤器相对于对称过滤器的优越性，并且在纤维直径为 1.8 和 3μm 的情况下，不对称过滤器均提供了快速且出色的白细胞去除效果。纤维直径较细的膜显示出增加的流动阻力。膜的孔径为 9-29μm，大于血细胞的大小，这表明白细胞去除的主要机制是白细胞直接附着在过滤膜上。因此，可以得出结论，尽管静电纺丝适合制造白细胞去除过滤介质，但在选择具有理想表面化学性质、润湿性和固有白细胞结合能力的聚合物时，不建议使用纳米尺寸纤维作为白细胞附着过滤器。
