USPTO issues a patent on wearable artificial kidney

The United States Patent Office issues a patent for a wearable artificial kidney to Nephrologists Victor Gura, MD, FASN. The clinical trial is expected to start this year to test the third-generation device.

The Patentee Gura is an associate clinical professor of medicine at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and his company, Wearable Artificial Organs Inc., was issued patent number 10,993,183 for "combination wearable and stationary dialysis systems," according to the patent office website.

Speaking to Healio Nephrology, Gura said that he has been working on reducing weight and streamlining the mechanisms of the wearable artificial kidney, or WAK, for the past 20 years. He held small clinical trials around the world after animal testing of the prototype 1.0 – which weighed more than 200 pounds – was replaced with version 2.0, which weighed 11 pounds. It was tested in three clinical trials in Vicenza, Italy; London, and Seattle.

In the press release, Gura said, "We are delighted with this new version of the WAK. It will free patients from spending long hours in bed or an armchair, tied up to a big machine in a dialysis clinic. A miniaturized, battery-operated wearable artificial kidney (WAK) can improve patient autonomy and has the potential to improve quality of life and reduce mortality"

The patent description says, "The first dialysis system can be configured to be coupled to a belt worn by the patient around [the] waist of the patient during its operation. The second dialysis system can [be] configured to be coupled to stationary support during its operation,

Describing the device, Gura said, "the WAK is a system for hemodialysis [that] can include a first dialysis system and a second dialysis system configured to be used alternately to provide hemodialysis for a patient, wherein the first dialysis system is configured to be worn by the patient, and wherein the second dialysis system is configured to be positioned on a support independent of the patient."