Briefs
Efferon's blood filter aims to cut pediatric sepsis deaths
Efferon's CE-marked pediatric device aims to cut organ failure and speed recovery in children with sepsis, which kills roughly 3 million kids under five each year.
Sepsis, an acute inflammation triggered by infection, is a leading cause of childhood mortality, killing roughly 3 million children under five every year. Efferon, a medical device startup selected for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026’s Startup Battlefield 200, is trying to drastically lower that number.
The company has built a device that it says lowers organ failure rates and significantly accelerates recovery in children. When standard treatments such as antibiotics cannot stop the immune system’s overreaction to an infection, a patient’s blood must be filtered to remove the toxins driving that overreaction. That is where Efferon’s devices — absorbers of dangerous cytokines and toxins — step in to make a critical difference.
Efferon co-founder and CEO Dima Romashin compares what happens in the body during sepsis to a fire. “In a fire, there are two things: the flame itself and smoke that it produces,” he told TechCrunch. In sepsis, he said, endotoxins are the flame and cytokines are the smoke. Unlike other devices on the market, Efferon has developed a mechanism that can absorb both at once, according to Romashin.
Efferon also makes absorbers for adults, but its pediatric device, Efferon NEO, developed specifically for young children, is proving especially effective. Because children have a significantly lower circulating blood volume than adults, Romashin said, they require medical devices engineered specifically for their physiology. In April, Efferon NEO received a CE mark — Europe’s equivalent of FDA approval — making it, according to the company, the first multimodal blood-purification device engineered specifically for pediatric sepsis.
Efferon NEO is now used in intensive care units across 30 countries, including hospitals in Europe, Saudi Arabia and Thailand. The company is preparing to file for FDA approval and is on track to hit $2 million in annualized revenue by the end of 2026.
The underlying technology was originally developed by scientists at Moscow State University, including co-founder Ivan Bessonov. Romashin, a serial entrepreneur, stepped in as CEO earlier this year to help commercialize it. He admits Efferon isn’t growing at the breakneck pace of today’s AI startups, but he measures the company’s success differently: by every child who gets to go home.
Why it matters
Efferon NEO’s CE mark and its existing ICU deployments — including in Saudi Arabia — give the device a regulatory and clinical head start as the company pursues FDA approval, positioning it to expand further across the Gulf and other markets where it already operates if US clearance comes through.