Synthesis and performance of amphiphilic copolymers for blood cell separation

Three types of amphiphilic copolymers using n-butylmethacrylate (BMA) as a hydrophobic monomer, and each of N,N′-dimethylacrylamide (DMA), N-acryloylmorpholine (AMO) and N-vinylpyrrolidone (VP) as hydrophilic co-monomers were synthesized for coating filters used to remove leukocytes. The influence of the amphiphilic property of the resulting filters, which were composed of non-woven fabrics coated with the above copolymers, on leukocyte removal and platelet permeation through the filters from whole blood was investigated. The filters coated with poly(AMO-co-BMA) and poly(DMA-co-BMA) showed more than 80% platelet permeation ratio, while the platelet permeation ratio through hydrophobic non-coated filters was only 0.2%. On the other hand, the coated filters showed slightly a higher permeation ratio of leukocytes than did the non-coated filters.