Af\nity Partitioning in Aqueous Two-Phase Systems

for use in extracorporeal circuits, for the removal of toxic substances such as certain metabolites or antibodies from blood. For example, exogenous human serum amyloid P component, a substance associated with Alzheimer’s disease, has been removed from whole rat blood in an extracorporeal circulation system. This model system used a polyclonal antibody coupled to cellulose Sat-sheet membranes. The biocompatibility of the membrane was also demonstrated. A similar application is the removal of autoantibodies from human plasma, using membrane-bound afRnity ligands in extracorporeal circuits. Apart from preparative applications, small cartridges with membrane discs or continuous membrane rods should be useful for analytical-scale separations and afRnity solid-phase extraction, for example for immunoextraction.