Created by Michigan Medicine, the first-in-class immune cell directed therapeutic device could be a breakthrough in the fight against deadly infections in kids
Johanna Younghans Baker
June 24, 2025
A young child, with a previous kidney transplant, presented to the U-M emergency room with a concerning mass in the abdomen.
On triple immunosuppressive therapies at the time, additional testing revealed the child had developed mature B-cell leukemia.
Due to the diagnosis, the patient was started on chemotherapy.
Not long after discharge, though, he presented to the emergency room again with a fever, body weakness and abdominal pain.
The child was tachycardic, hypotensive, jaundiced, and blood work revealed severely low blood counts and a bacterial infection.
The patient was diagnosed with septic shock and five-organ system failure and was promptly admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit.
There the patient was intubated and placed on mechanical ventilation support with a minimal chance of survival.
“The likelihood of the patient dying was nearly 100% when we intervened,” said David Humes, M.D., a nephrologist at Michigan Medicine who was consulted on the situation.
At this point, the team was faced with limited options.
“The group had to decide how to cautiously approach the child’s care, and if we use traditional methods, or potentially, try something new,” said Humes.
Humes realized that a therapeutic device he had been working on with his colleague, Stuart Goldstein, M.D., from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, for over 20 years, could be the lifesaving intervention they needed.
Over the last two decades, Humes and his research and clinical colleagues developed the now FDA-approved immunomodulatory device called the Selective Cytopheretic Device, and he thought it could help.
There was just one issue: at that point, the device hadn’t been approved yet by the Food and Drug Administration for this particular scenario.
So, this case would be a first, but possibly the “Hail Mary” they were hoping for.
“The patient’s extremely low blood counts were considered a potential risk though, and the device had never been used previously in this type of situation,” explained Humes.
The Selective Cytopheretic Device is an autologous immune cell directed device that tempers the hyperinflammatory state of a multiple disease process taking place, including sepsis, explains Humes.
Since the technology directs its effects on circulating white blood cells, which were very low in the patient, the clinical team worried a risk to further lower the white blood cells could result in a worsening infection.
The one upside of it all was that the medical staff at U-M was familiar with the device since it was used in multiple adult and pediatric trials on their hospital floors already.
The Selective Cytopheretic Device