Liver failure is one of the dominant causes of death worldwide. The WHO estimates that worldwide more than 12m people are suffering from liver disease. In the eight economically leading countries of the world alone, over 100,000 patients die from liver diseases each year. Despite numerous efforts, at present, the only reliable curative therapy is liver transplantation. However, liver transplantation is only available for very few patients due to the limited number of available organs. In addition, most liver patients are ineligible for transplantation due to co-morbidities. Therefore, transplantation is and will be in the future only a therapy for a minority of patients. Thus, there is an urgent need for a liver assist device to reduce the very high mortality and morbidity of liver patients.
The Hepa Wash team aims to develop an innovative liver support therapy that will significantly enhance the survival rate and improve the quality of live of patients with liver disease.
Hepa Wash was founded mid 2005 by Dr. Bernhard Kreymann (CEO) at that time interims head of the nephrology department of the university hospital rechts der Isar. He invented the Hepa Wash® techology based on his expert knowledge in extracorporeal systems and his longstanding experience in the treatment of patients with severe kidney and liver failure. Since then, Hepa Wash has developed, analyzed, and optimized its technology in more than two years of in vitro tests, built its laboratory prototype, established an improved pig model for acute liver failure and successfully finished its proof of concept animal study in pigs with acute liver failure. Heap Wash expects to start commercialization of its innovative liver therapy in Europe by 2011.