Researchers design model for automated, wearable artificial kidney

[okarol]

Researchers design model for automated, wearable artificial kidney
UCLA–VA signs patent-licensing agreement with Singapore company
By
Enrique Rivero
| 7/9/2008
Two researchers from UCLA and the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System have developed a design for an automated, wearable artificial kidney, or AWAK, that avoids the complications patients often suffer with traditional dialysis.
 
The design for the peritoneal-based artificial kidney — which is "bloodless" and reduces or even eliminates protein loss and other dialysis-related problems — is summarized in an article published in the current issue of the journal Clinical and Experimental Nephrology, available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10157-008-0050-9.
 
UCLA–VA has also signed an exclusive licensing agreement with the Singapore-based company AWAK Technologies Pte. Ltd. to develop a commercial wearable kidney based on the design by Martin Roberts, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a dialysis consultant with the VA Healthcare System, and David B.N. Lee, a professor of medicine at the Geffen School and a consultant nephrologist at the VA.
 
Around 1980, an artificial kidney machine was built that incorporated many of the principles on which the new technology relies, according to Roberts. But that machine, while portable, was not wearable. The new technology would allow patients to go about their regular business while undergoing dialysis.
 
"What's really new about it is the patient's freedom," Roberts said. "To me, as the inventor, the most important thing for the patients is their freedom. The next important thing is that because it's working all the time instead of intermittently, you can do a much better job of treating the patient. So we expect the patient to feel better and live longer."
 
Kidneys remove metabolic wastes from the body and regulate fluid volume and distribution on a continuous, around-the-clock basis. With traditional hemodialysis, patients are hooked up to a machine for four hours, three times a week. Their blood is filtered through the machine to remove toxins and is then pumped back into the body. What hemodialysis can't do, however, is provide cleansing and fluid balance on a continuous basis; therefore, toxin levels and fluid volume tend to fluctuate, causing "shocks" to the patient's system. The same is true of standard peritoneal-based dialysis.
 
In addition, hemodialysis uses anticoagulants to prevent the blood circulating outside the body from clotting. But this, too, can cause complications. Work on other wearable kidneys has been based on this hemodialysis or hemofiltration model.
 
The AWAK, on the other hand, would function continuously, as natural kidneys do, eliminating patient "shocks." And because it does not involve blood circulation outside the body, it is "bloodless." It also regenerates and reuses fluid and protein components in the spent dialysate — the fluid that has abstracted toxins from the patient's blood and which is discarded in current practice — making it waterless and minimizing or eliminating protein loss.
 
"Dialysis-on-the-go, made possible by AWAK's 'wearability' and automation, frees end-stage renal failure patients from the servitude that is demanded by the current dialytic regimentations," Roberts and Lee write in the journal article.
 
Working out of the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Roberts and Lee funded their research that led to the invention.

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-and-va-researchers-design-52444.aspx

[stauffenberg]

I first read about this device, then called the 'backpack kidney machine,' in a New York Times article in 1976.  Medical science progresses so slowly, you would think we were in the Middle Ages.  It has now taken as much time to advance from the prototype portable dialysis machine to the verge of having a clinically usable device than it took medicine to advance from the awareness that the pancreas was involved in causing diabetes (experiments by von Mehring and Minkowski in 1889) to the discovery of insulin by Banting and Best in 1921!

[petey]

I first read about this device, then called the 'backpack kidney machine,' in a New York Times article in 1976. Medical science progresses so slowly, you would think we were in the Middle Ages. It has now taken as much time to advance from the prototype portable dialysis machine to the verge of having a clinically usable device than it took medicine to advance from the awareness that the pancreas was involved in causing diabetes (experiments by von Mehring and Minkowski in 1889) to the discovery of insulin by Banting and Best in 1921!

My dear Stauffenberg, let's look at this from the positive side -- at least it has the promise of coming!  Wouldn't it have been sad if it had been first mentioned in 1976 and nothing at all had ever been said about it again?  Middle Ages or not -- some progress is better than none at all.

[okarol]

I too have read similar stories over the years. This is the first time any have mentioned signing a patent-licensing agreement. Still, it will probably be a long time until we see these at the local medical supply company!

[RichardMEL]

Imagine if this is something that could become practical in a few years. It would mean we could travel (hopefully!) and it should eliminate a lot of dietry and FLUID restrictions (I hope??)... that would make life so much more normal for us while we wait for a transplant.

Yes, who knows when and things move slowly but if we can get something like this it would really improve our lot generally.

[pelagia]

On the positive side, just remember that there was no such thing as a computer chip in 1976, or at least not one small enough to put in an iPod. 

On the down side -- medical progress in the U.S. is driven in large part by the amount of money the government puts towards research.  We know we can educate world class scientists and engineers, but then the questions becomes, can they find jobs?  With diminishing federal budgets for research there are fewer jobs and less support for science and engineering research.  It all results in less progress.  After correcting for inflation, the real dollars being spent on research in the U.S. have barely budged in over 20 years.  Our government plays a shell game.  They move money from one agency to another and then trumpet the increases for the winner.  It's going to get worse as the population ages and more money is required to meet "entitlements", especially social security, as well as energy costs and the cost of war.  Don't get me wrong.  I want my retirement benefits and I am willing to invest rationally in defense.  But, we have to remember that cutting edge research and technology require substantial continuing investments.  If we don't invest, we can't expect to reap the benefits.  It's our choice, but not one, I suspect, that many Americans ponder. 

[flip]

or it could end up like the artificial heart

[twirl]

hope it is not one size fits all