A researcher at the University of Houston is working on a microfluidic device to treat babies with blood disorders such as leukemia.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute provided a $1.6 million grant to fund the work of biomedical engineering professor Sergey Shevkoplyas, who is adapting microfluidic technology to enable leukapheresis for very young patients.

In traditional leukapheresis, large machines extract whole blood from patients to separate white blood cells from the rest of the blood, which is then returned back to the patient. This procedure is used to urgently reduce a dangerously elevated white blood cell count, or to collect various white blood cell subsets for therapeutic purposes.

Leukapheresis is currently performed using centrifugation-based machines, which require a substantial amount of blood be taken out of a patient, putting small children at significantly higher risk of low blood pressure, catheter-related thrombosis, infections, severe anemia and even death, according to the university.

“Although well-tolerated by most adults and older children, leukapheresis in young children, weighing less than about 22 pounds, is technically challenging and clinically risky,” said Shevkoplyas, who is working with Baylor College of Medicine collaborators Fong W. Lam and Karen R. Rabin on the project.

Shevkoplyas is developing a new device that looks like a small plastic dish with many tiny channels cut into it. The channels are designed to separate blood cells by size, using a new cell separation approach called controlled incremental filtration (CIF). He and his colleagues are planning to adapt CIF to enable separation of white blood cells from flowing blood with high efficiency, minimal loss of red blood cells and platelets, and at flow rates on par with conventional leukapheresis.

“The ability to perform leukapheresis safely and effectively in these most vulnerable pediatric patients will significantly increase their access to a rapidly expanding range of highly effective cell-based therapies, thus having a potentially transformative impact on health and well-being of children worldwide,” Shevkoplyas said in a news release. “Since all the existing machines were built for adults, we have to do something very special for babies, that’s what is inspiring us.”