Solving the Oxygen Problem in Membrane Oxygenators Drug Delivery
Published: 10 Apr 2026
Author: Towards Healthcare
Long-term drug producers implement living cells that transform treatment for numerous diseases, which makes it difficult to house the tiny workers in quantities high enough to ensure dosage needs are met while also keeping the cells alive and thriving.
Researchers and collaborators from Rice University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Northwestern University have now successfully integrated solutions to several persistent challenges to implantable drug factories into a single device.
According to Towards Healthcare, the Membrane Oxygenators Market is projected to experience significant growth, with estimates suggesting the market size will increase from USD 1.55 billion in 2026 to approximately USD 2.83 billion by 2035, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.9% from 2026 to 2035. Growth is driven by ensuring HOBIT incorporates a miniaturised electrocatalytic oxygenator, designed to be placed under the skin an area that can be accessed via minimally invasive surgery and is relatively low risk, but which tends to be poorly oxygenated compared to more vascularized tissues.
About HOBIT
According to a study, the Hybrid Oxygenation Bioelectronics system for Implanted Therapy (HOBIT) shields a sufficient number of cells from the host immune system in a comfortably small volume while also providing access to oxygen and nutrients.
A Rice PhD student, Chris Wright, found that when they are packed into dense clusters, cells compete with each other for oxygen. To address this, HOBIT incorporates an oxygen-making machine that uses an iridium oxide-based surface that uses electricity supplied by an on-board battery to split water present in surrounding tissue to generate oxygen locally, without producing harmful byproducts.
Professor of materials science, engineering, and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, Tzahi Cohen-Karni, stated that our collaborative efforts are highly unique, a combination of energy research, with bioengineering, toward efficiently providing oxygen to the cell factories.
The Jerome B. Cohen Professor in Engineering at Northwestern, Jonathan Rivnay, We are producing oxygen directly where the cells need it. This allows us to support much higher cell densities in a much smaller space. Cell densities in HOBIT were roughly six times higher than conventional unoxygenated encapsulation approaches.
A recent report by Towards Healthcare highlights that the Membrane Oxygenators Market is witnessing growth due to the increasing prevalence of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, advancement in membrane technology, and rising healthcare investment with government initiatives to improve healthcare access and adoption of minimally invasive surgical techniques.