Plasma Separation Membranes

The development of a point-of-care (POC) diagnostic test that meets the end user's needs for simplicity, speed, and accuracy is focused on the synthesis of high-quality plasma from whole blood samples without the use of a centrifuge. The intrinsic variability of blood necessitates reliable plasma separation in many analyses. The right separating membrane can efficiently create the same quality of plasma as centrifugation, allowing diagnostic applications like microfluidics and lateral flow POC devices to be optimized. Alfa Chemistry offers dependable plasma separation membranes to its customers.

How to Choose A Plasma Separation Membrane

Consider the following variables when choosing plasma separation membranes to fulfill your application's sensitivity and repeatability requirements:

Blood Volume: The same amount of whole blood cannot be accepted by all plasma separation materials. Choose the right membrane grade for your application to get the best separation results.

Plasma Volume: The volume of plasma produced by the lateral filtration of the membrane varies with the type of polymer. The two most commonly used substrates for plasma generation are asymmetric polysulfone and glass fiber. Compared with other materials, fiberglass materials generally produce less plasma per microliter of blood.

Hemolysis: During the filtration process, certain contaminants might cause red blood cells to rupture, compromising downstream analysis. It's crucial to know how much hemolysis your analysis can handle before choosing plasma separation materials.

Separation Time: If you have a time constraint on your analysis, you need know how rapidly the substance separates the plasma.

Non-specific Binding: Glass fiber materials are frequently employed in blood separation applications, however they have several drawbacks. These materials frequently bind analytes of interest, such as cholesterol. The binding qualities of the blood separation material must be assessed to ensure that the biomarker of interest is not bound by the filter matrix, which could lower the assay's sensitivity.

Learn About Our Plasma Separation Membranes

• Reliable performance: Because of the PS membrane's extremely asymmetric composition, cell components in the blood can be effectively removed without centrifugation. Larger pores on the membrane's upstream side catch red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. The cells are not lysed, and plasma passes through the small holes on the membrane's downstream side.
• Low hemolysis: The amount of hemolysis is far lower than the amount of plasma produced by glass fiber media.
• High plasma yield: The membrane can produce ≥80% of theoretically usable plasma, while comparable glass fiber yields are usually in the range of 30-50%.
• Low sample size: High plasma production means that a small amount of starting whole blood is required. This is advantageous for POC and POU diagnostic applications, because less blood is needed from the patient or animal.
• Low analyte binding: Whole blood passed through this membrane has the same 2D SDS-PAGE protein profile as the cardiac biomarker troponin I when compared to centrifuged plasma. The results reveals that the protein content of clinical indicators does not diminish when passed via the membrane, making it an appropriate material for diagnostic applications.
• Device integration: Compatible with diagnostic platforms such as lateral flow test strips and microfluidics at the point-of-care (POC) and point-of-use (POU).

Multiple Levels

Alfa Chemistry can provide a variety of membrane grades to meet your blood volume testing needs. Membranes for ion separation come in three classes, each tailored for a specific application: