Implantable, Artificial Kidney to be Powered by Patient's Own Heart

Vanderbilt University Medical Center nephrologist and associate professor of medicine Dr. William H. Fissell IV, is developing a first-of-its kind device to free kidney patients from dialysis. He is building an implantable artificial kidney with microchip filters and living kidney cells that will be powered by a patient's own heart. The key to the device is a microchip. "It's called silicon nanotechnology. It uses the same processes that were developed by the microelectronics industry for computers," says Fissell. The chips are affordable, precise, and make ideal filters. Fissell's team is designing each pore in the filter one by one based on what they want that pore to do. Each device will hold roughly fifteen microchips layered on top of each other. The team will use live kidney cells that will grow on and around the microchip filters. The goal is for these cells to mimic the natural actions of the kidney.

Transcript

00:00:01 a first of its Kind device to free kidney patients from dialysis Let's take a view inside Dr william's artificial [âm nhạc] kidney kidney disease patient William hayes is an optimist Glass always have but even goods him from end diys Days a Monday w Friday from noon until

00:00:41 4:30 I'm going to do What I need to do to live he and some 450,000 americans are tied to dialysis machines because their kidneys are failing haes has been on a transplant weit list for years but I was like first to second on their list For A While and it just never happened last Year just 17,000 people nationwide received a lifesaving

00:01:07 transplant This vanderbilt researcher is leading the fight to change those odds I have this Wacky idea that we can make an implantable artificial kidy this Holy grail That's been talked about powered by a patient's own Heart we think that we can get a device down small enough that it can Get Enough clearance enough removal of waste products and enough removal of salt and water to keep a

00:01:32 patient off dialysis but still be small enough like C can size Coffee can size to fit inside a patient's body Cavity the key this Tiny chip It's called silicon nanotechnology uses the same processes that were developed by the microelectronics industry for computers for this for this for this the chips are affordable precise and make ideal filters and the ability to design each

00:02:00 and every pour in the filter one by One based on What you want that pour to do they do more than filter they're also the scaffold on which the cells will rest living kidney cells grown in this Lab are part of the device if you think about a kidney they all have two Common structures They have a filtration part and They have gland like structure of epithelial

00:02:29 Cell calledb which reabsorb water and other els your body wants to We can leverage mother Nature 60 million years of research and development and use those kidney cells that fortunately for us Grow promiscuous in the Lab dish and Grow them into a bioreactor of living cells that will be the only Santa Claus membrane in the world the only membrane

00:02:53 that knows which solutes have been Naughty and which solutes have been Nice And able to reabsorb the stuff your body needs and the stuff that your body desperately wants to get rid of this bioh Hybrid device sits out of reach from the body's immune response protecting it from rejection the issue is not one of immune compliance of matching like it is With An Organ

00:03:17 transplant now putting the artificial kidney to work so This is a prototype that We're using in our preclinical testing Right now the device operates naturally with a patient's blood flow our Challenge is to take Blood in a blood vessel and transform that pulsating unsteady flow and distribute it amongst a large number of these Little flat

00:03:44 chips We use the same sort of Technology That's used to make a modern commercial Jet fluid dynamics and That's where vanderbilt bioengineer Amanda buck Comes in so We're looking at the um device to see if There are certain regions that cause recirculation regions or areas that might cause clotting in the device playing with the Channel Shape We rapidly prototype using 3D printing the

00:04:12 shapes that we've modeled making Blood flow smoothly and we Circle back and we improve our design Again And Again And Again the trial device holds two filters the real world device that will scale up for actual clinical use We probably hold 15 or 16 plates in the stack says He has a long list of dialysis patients eer to join the trial My patients are Absolutely My Heroes they Come Back

00:04:39 Again And Again And Again And suffer A crushing burden of illness because they Want to Live and they're willing to put all of that At Risk for the Sake of another patient hain is enthusiastic about a brighter future for kidney disas patients like you got disease isure same time is not necessarily a Death sentence so just live I've got Nine grandchildren and having Nine

00:05:07 grandchild I want to be around for them groundbreaking work to help the millions of kidney patients to [âm nhạc] come