Purifying chylous plasma by precluding triglyceride via carboxylated polyethersulfone microfiltration membrane

Precluding the excessive lipoproteins from plasma rapidly and effectively is highly needed for biomedical detection and reducing plasma product scrap in blood donation stations. The current centrifugation procedure is high-cost and time-consuming. Herein, we fabricated an anionic microfiltration polyethersulfone (PES) membrane modified by interface swelling and implanting of acrylic acid (AA) for screening out large particle lipoprotein chylomicron (CM) and adsorbing cationic very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL). To improve the separation efficiency, a two-stage filtration through carboxylated polyethersulfone microfiltration membranes with the mean pore size of 0.45 and 0.22 μm respectively were conducted. Attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared technique (ATR-FTIR), water contact angle (WCA), Zeta potential and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were employed to characterize the modified membrane. To test the effectiveness of this membrane, plasma flux and concentration variation of plasma components were examined to study the purification effectiveness. Furthermore, the hemocompatibility of modified membranes was tested to confirm its practicability on blood-contacting materials. The carboxylated polyethersulfone microfiltration membrane shows its promising potential application to purify chylous plasma.