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Fresenius Medical Care Deutschland GmbH

Frankfurter Straße 6-8

66606 Sankt Wendel
 

Contact:

Telefon: +49 6851 807 3302
E-Mail:  sarah.oster[at]freseniusmedicalcare.com
 

PhD topic:

Development of a reproducible in-vitro test system to demonstrate ultrafiltration behavior

In 2023, around 5 million patients worldwide were being treated for chronic kidney failure. Although transplantation is the most effective and cost-effective treatment method, the number of donors is not nearly sufficient to treat the increasing number of patients. For this reason, 81 % of patients were so-called dialysis patients who had to be treated with renal replacement therapy. Basically, renal replacement therapy can be divided into hemodialysis (HD) and peritoneal dialysis (PD).

Fresenius Medical Care AG is one of the world's leading companies in the field of dialysis treatment.

Both HD and PD are based on the principle of selective diffusion (filtering out toxins) and on the principle of ultrafiltration (removal of excess body water). In HD, the pressure gradient required for ultrafiltration is generated on the dialysis machine, whereas in PD, an osmotic agent such as glucose must be added to the dialysis solution. In HD, an external filter performs the separation task, while in PD the peritoneum is used as a natural semi-permeable membrane to retain the essential blood components. All of these processes fundamentally determine the effectiveness of dialysis.

The processes at the peritoneum in particular cannot be adequately depicted in-vitro. For this reason, research into ultrafiltration in general and specifically in relation to PD under in-vitro conditions is of great interest. Therefore, a reproducible in-vitro test system is to be developed as part of this PhD, with which ultrafiltration can be investigated in more detail. Over the PhD, the test system is to be adapted so that the transport processes in the peritoneum during PD can be mapped. Hollow fiber membranes will be used to represent the peritoneum in the in-vitro test system.