Protein-bound retention solutes in extracorporeal therapies

Extracorporeal therapies are used to support organ functions and to remove pathogenic substances from the blood. Examples of clinically established procedures are dialysis, liver support, immune adsorption and lipid apheresis. While dialysis mainly removes water-soluble toxins from blood, the other apheresis methods mainly use combined membrane/adsorption systems for the removal of hydrophobic compounds. However, there are also various substance groups in dialysis that are not or hardly water-soluble and therefore cannot be removed sufficiently with conventional dialysis. The uremic retention solutes (uremic toxins) are divided into 3 substance groups: - Small water-soluble compounds (e.g. urea, creatinine, uric acid) - Protein-bound compounds (e.g. homocysteine, indoxyl sulfate, CMPF) - Middle molecules (z.B. ß2-microglobulin) This project focuses on the last two substance groups and has the following objectives: (1) The establishment of detection methods for protein-bound uremic toxins by ELISA and HPLC (2) The establishment and validation of in vitro uremic blood production (3) The development of methods for efficient removal of protein-bound uremic toxins from human whole blood.

Funding: Country of Lower Austria, EFRE