New system for removing antibodies from the blood.
Düsseldorf, Germany. CardioImmun, a blood cleansing system that targets harmful antibodies and removes them from the body, was the recipient of this year´s Innovation Award for Medical Technology from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Research Minister Annette Schavan presented the award on November 14 at Medica, the world´s largest medical trade show, in Düsseldorf.
CardioImmun was developed by MAT Adsorption Technologies, a subsidiary of B. Braun Melsungen AG, in collaboration with Greifswald University. The new procedure aims to significantly improve treatment and prognosis in the case of severe heart diseases such as dilatative cardiomyopathy. The concept is based on membrane adsorption, which is simple from a technical perspective as well as being very inexpensive. The project is now to receive funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, with up to €1.5 million for conducting a transfer project.
In Germany, 1.5 million people suffer from heart failure – generally following coronary heart disease. Another frequent cause is dilatative cardiomyopathy (DCM). This heart muscle disease expands the right and left ventricle and impedes their function. To date, there has generally been no alternative to surgery such as heart transplantation or a cardiac pacemaker.
With CardioImmun, significant improvement is possible without the need for surgery. Although in most cases the causes of DCM are not clear, the disease can be said to have been brought about by a viral infection in roughly a third of cases, where enteroviruses cause an inflammation in the heart muscle tissue. Although the body´s own defense system does react by producing antibodies, these then proceed to attack the heart tissue. CardioImmun removes harmful antibodies without weakening the patient´s resistance even further.
This process takes place outside the body. The blood flows through a fine nanostructure made of membranes. In this way, the pathogenetic autoantibodies are bound physicochemically to specially developed peptides, billions of which are found on the membranes.
If this procedure is used early on in a patient´s treatment, it can significantly improve efforts to combat the disease and can reduce the mortality rate among DCM patients. The targeted removal of autoantibodies reduces the risk of infection, treatment time and costs and renders the therapy more efficient. CardioImmun stands a good chance of being used as the standard therapy of the future for DCM. However, the method is also expected to prove its worth with other diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus.
