Extracorporeal Immunoadsorbents for Specific Extraction of Circulating Immune Reactants

Abstract

Considerable evidence has accumulated to substantiate the role of immune reactants in many experimental and human diseases.^(1,2) Therapy for many of these immunologically mediated diseases has been dependent upon the use of pharmacologic agents that widely and non-specifically suppress host immunity leading to numerous undesirable effects.⁽³⁾ In addition, there has been an increasing awareness of the etiologic factors in many immunologically mediated diseases and the concomitant development of many sensitive radioimmunological techniques to measure them. Therefore, we have focused our attention on a specific therapeutic measure, i.e., the development of solid phase immunoadsorbents to specifically remove pathogenic immune reactants from the circulation. For this purpose we have developed several immunoadsorbents consisting of immobilized antigens, antibodies and enzymes. When placed in an extracorporeal circuit, these immunoadsorbents have shown a capacity to specifically extract or hydrolyze immune reactants in the circulation with no demonstrable release of immobilized substances and no significant immediate or long-range toxicity to the host.