Biomaterial Database

Phenylglyoxaldehyde-Functionalized Polymeric Sorbents for Urea Removal from Aqueous Solutions. 2020

Jacobus A W Jong, and Yong Guo, and Cas Veenhoven, and Marc-Etienne Moret, and Johan van der Zwan, and Alessandra Lucini Paioni, and Marc Baldus, and Karina C Scheiner, and Remco Dalebout, and Mies J van Steenbergen, and Marianne C Verhaar, and Robert Smakman, and Wim E Hennink, and Karin G F Gerritsen, and Cornelus F van Nostrum

Department of Pharmaceutics, Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences (UIPS), Utrecht University, Universiteitsweg 99, 3584 CG Utrecht, The Netherlands.

For realization of a wearable artificial kidney based on regeneration of a small volume of dialysate, efficient urea removal from dialysate is a major challenge. Here a potentially suitable polymeric sorbent based on phenylglyoxaldehyde (PGA), able to covalently bind urea under physiological conditions, is described. Sorbent beads containing PGA groups were obtained by suspension polymerization of either styrene or vinylphenylethan-1-one (VPE), followed by modification of the aromatic groups of poly(styrene) and poly(VPE) into PGA. It was found that PGA-functionalized sorbent beads had maximum urea binding capacities of 1.4-2.2 mmol/g and removed ∼0.6 mmol urea/g in 8 h at 37 °C under static conditions from urea-enriched phosphate-buffered saline, conditions representative of dialysate regeneration. This means that the daily urea production of a dialysis patient can be removed with a few hundred grams of this sorbent which, is an important step forward in the development of a wearable artificial kidney.