Decrease the cost of running a COBE plateletpheresis machine by creating more cost effective parts, such as tubing.

Project Overview

Plateletpheresis is performed in human medicine for collection of platelets. Apheresis equipment uses centrifugal technology to separate whole blood into its components, collecting platelets (plateletpheresis) and returning the uncollected components to the donor. Unlike whole blood collection, apheresis is a technique that does not deprive the donor of blood components, other than platelets, and thus is a potentially safer and more effective method of platelet collection. These collected platelets can then be used in regenerative medicine to create platelet lysate. This employed method of plateletpheresis to produce platelet lysate in human medicine has also been proven to be feasible and safe in dogs and has been demonstrated to be feasible in horses.
The cost of this procedure is very high due to materials used with the machine such as tubing. The cost for tubing used in human medicine runs $2000-2600 per time the machine is used. Plus in human medicine tubing is only allowed to be used once for each patient. For the use in dogs and horses up till now, the materials used such as tubing were thrones used in humans. This makes it cost prohibitive to use this machine in veterinary medicine more frequently. We would like the students to come up with ideas to create parts of this machine such as tubing and such to make it more economically and cost effective to be used in veterinary medicine. That way this procedure could collect platelets from large animals such as horse and cows. The new material/parts need to be multiple use and easy to sterilize so that part of the machine can be used in multiple patients to bring the cost of the procedure down.

Team Picture

Files

• Final Report (December 9, 2020)
• Final Notebook (December 9, 2020)
• Final Poster Presentation (December 3, 2020)
• Preliminary Report (October 7, 2020)
• Preliminary Presentation (October 1, 2020)
• PDS (September 17, 2020)

Contact Information

Team Members

• Aditya Ailiani - Team Leader
• Cate Flynn - Communicator
• Nesya Graupe - BSAC
• Trevor Silber - BWIG
• Lokesh Kumaravel - BPAG

Advisor and Client

• Dr. Melissa Kinney - Advisor
• Prof. Sabrina Brounts - Client
• Dr. Harpreet Singh - Alternate Contact