Scientists have developed a resin filter that can remove prion proteins from the blood of an infected animal. In a study published in Lancet, blood from scrapie-infected hamsters were filtered using a device called a leukofilter and another filter containing the new resin particles engineered to capture the prion proteins. The researchers found none of the nearly 100 hamsters inoculated with the leukoreduced, resin-filtered blood were infected with scrapie by the end of the 550-day test.

Aided by scientists in NC State's Nonwovens Cooperative Research Center, located in the College of Textiles, Carbonell and his colleagues have now developed a new filter to remove prions from donated blood during transfusions. The device takes donated blood from a blood bag, passes it through several "sandwiches" of the prion-capture resin beads placed between nonwoven fabric membranes, and places the filtered blood in a separate blood bag prior to infusion into a patient or blood donation recipient.

The filter device, to be manufactured under the trade name P-Capt® Filter by MacoPharma, has received CE Mark regulatory approval in Europe. The researchers are now looking at expanding the technique to filter Hepatitis A virus, B19 parvovirus and Hepatitis C virus to further enhance the safety of blood transfusions.

Source: NCSU