When the dialysis machine was invented back when our boys were fighting that nefarious villain Adolph Hitler, it was a gigantic boon to people suffering from kidney disease. Since 1944, it has become about as ubiquitous as penicillin or, uh, the iPad. Well, similar technology has been adopted in more recent years to deal with blood transfusions and other causes of debilitating ailments. Well, hold on to your disease-infected hats, because now there is a machine to help make your spleen all shiny and new.
Researchers from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering set out to find a solution to a sometimes-fatal problem called sepsis, which comes about due to a faulty spleen. Their solution? Something they quite accurately call Spleen-on-a-chip. This cutely named device features a microchip that helps insert magnetic nanobeads into the bloodstream. The result? These nanobeads end up sticking to all of the toxic stuff that occupies our bloodstream and helps flush it out, thus helping patients alleviate sepsis and, eventually, other diseases as well.
As stated before, this technology could have huge, gigantic implications for other fields of medicine. We have long heard tell of a day when tiny nanobots would be injected in our bodies in order to cure just about anything that befalls us. That day, ladies and gentlemen, is just about upon us.
