Ghost Cells for Mechanical Circulatory Support In Vitro Testing: A Novel Large Volume Production

The aim of this work is to establish a large volume batch production system to produce sufficient volumes of ghost cells to facilitate hemolysis testing of mechanical circulatory support devices. A volume of more than 405 mL with a hematocrit of at least 28% is required to perform in vitro hemolysis testing of mechanical circulatory support devices according to international standards. The established ghost cell production method performed at the institute is limited to 3.1 mL of concentrated cells, that is, cells with 100% hematocrit, due to predominantly manual process steps. Through semi-automation of the existing method by using the large volume batch production system, productivity is increased 60-fold to 188 mL while almost doubling process efficiency to 23.5%. Time-consuming manual work such as pipetting is now supported by sensor-based process engineering. With the help of the large volume batch production system, the objective of producing large quantities of ghost cells is successfully achieved. Thus, this work lays the foundation for spatially resolved hemolysis evaluation of mechanical circulatory support devices in combination with the small-scale fluorescent hemolysis detection method.