Recent data demonstrate early and intensive use of CytoSorb therapy improves clinical outcomes for patients suffering from these conditions. Today, the Company provides an overview of CytoSorb's unique approach and the evolving data supporting its use, in advance of its September 10, 2025 World Sepsis Day Global Webinar – being held in commemoration of Sepsis Awareness Month and World Sepsis Day in September. Dr. Phillip Chan, MD, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, will host a special presentation with physician-user guests to discuss CytoSorb therapy best practices and its impact in the fight against sepsis.
Dr. Chan explains, "For more than a decade, CytoSorbents has partnered with clinicians and scientists to improve the treatment of sepsis and septic shock by supplementing traditional antibiotic therapy with the powerful, broad-spectrum blood purification capability of CytoSorb. While antibiotics target the source of infection, CytoSorb addresses the other major drivers of septic shock, including severe inflammation, shock, capillary leak, fluid overload, and organ failure. Recent studies reinforce that, like antibiotics, CytoSorb therapy is most effective when initiated early, applied intensively, and continued for an appropriate duration. Backed by a strong safety record and many peer-reviewed publications, CytoSorbents and collaborators are helping to solve this critical problem that claims millions of lives around the world annually."
Sepsis and Septic Shock: A Life-Threatening Crisis Driven by Inflammation
Sepsis is a complex, life-threatening condition where the inflammatory response to a serious infection can spiral out of control, fueled by the excessive production of cytokines (cytokine storm), bacterial toxins, and other inflammatory agents. Left unchecked, this inflammation can lead to septic shock – an often fatal complication marked by circulatory collapse and a lethal drop in blood pressure, the failure of multiple vital organs, and fluid overload – essentially drowning the patient from within. Each year, sepsis and septic shock afflict an estimated 49 million people worldwide, killing 11 million, accounting for up to 20% of all global deaths.
Despite decades of effort, standard treatments of septic shock such as antibiotics, fluids, vasopressors, and organ support are often not enough, with mortality rates of 30-50% that can escalate rapidly with multiple organ failure. Survivors often face long-term disability and shorter life spans. The complexity of sepsis has led to the failure of hundreds of therapy candidates and over 100 Phase II and III clinical trials over many decades – underscoring the urgent need for more effective solutions.
CytoSorb: A Broad-Spectrum Solution with Real-World Impact
CytoSorb® is a first-in-class, extracorporeal blood purification therapy approved in the European Union with nearly 300,000 human treatments across more than 70 countries globally. It uses advanced porous polymer beads to remove a wide array of toxic substances directly from the bloodstream, including, for example, inflammatory cytokines and mediators, bacterial toxins, and other damaging molecules that contribute to inflammation, shock, blood vessel damage, and organ injury.
However, what sets CytoSorb apart from other approaches, that often simply focus on a single target or pathway, is a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach to the core problems of sepsis and septic shock. Based on a substantial body of published, peer-reviewed literature, CytoSorb can:
This broad-spectrum approach helps to support five essential treatment goals of CytoSorb in septic shock:
- Break the vicious cycle of uncontrolled inflammation
- Reverse shock and restore oxygenated blood flow
- Promote the repair of leaky blood vessels
- Actively remove excessive fluid and reduce fluid overload in organs
- Prevent or treat multiple organ failure
Like antibiotics, CytoSorb works best when used early, intensively, and at the right dose – the foundation of the Company's "Right patient, Right Timing, Right Dosing" educational campaign.
Positive Clinical Results Backing Early and Intensive CytoSorb Use
CytoSorbents' clinical impact is supported by hundreds of peer-reviewed publications in many different clinical applications such as sepsis, including data from the COVID-19 pandemic, where CytoSorb was granted U.S. FDA Emergency Use Authorization in critically ill COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure. In the 100-patient, multi-center registry of U.S. COVID-19 patients on CytoSorb and ECMO, published in the journal Critical Care (2023), where all had refractory respiratory failure and sepsis with 76% in septic shock, Hayanga and colleagues reported 74% 90-day survival, that rose to 82% in those treated early. This significantly outperformed published U.S. survival benchmarks of approximately 50% when CytoSorb was not used.
A separate, retrospective study of 175 septic shock patients recently published by Berlot and team in the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine (2025) demonstrated that early and intensive CytoSorb use (≥3 cartridges within 2–3 days) nearly doubled survival rates (70% observed vs. 37% predicted), with strong correlations between clinical benefit and treatment intensity. The study also corroborated the findings of another 75 septic shock patient retrospective study published by Schultz, et al. (2021) in the Journal of Critical Care that correlated survival with higher volumes of blood treated, highlighting that duration of treatment is critically important.
Further strengthening the evidence base, the first meta-analysis of 744 patients with septic shock by Steindl and colleagues from Charité Berlin Hospital was recently reported in the Journal of Clinical Medicine (2025) comparing 449 patients treated with CytoSorb and standard of care versus 295 control patients receiving standard of care alone. The study demonstrated statistically significant improvements in hemodynamics, vasopressor requirements, and survival compared to control patients, where CytoSorb:
About CytoSorbents Corporation (NASDAQ: CTSO)
CytoSorbents Corporation is a leader in the treatment of life-threatening conditions in the intensive care unit and cardiac surgery through blood purification. CytoSorbents' proprietary blood purification technologies are based on biocompatible, highly porous polymer beads that can actively remove toxic substances from blood and other bodily fluids by pore capture and surface adsorption. Cartridges filled with these beads can be used with standard blood pumps already in the hospital (e.g. dialysis, continuous renal replacement therapy or CRRT, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ECMO, and heart-lung machines), where blood is repeatedly recirculated outside the body, through our cartridges where toxic substances are removed, and then back into the body. CytoSorbents' technologies are used in a number of broad applications. Specifically, two important applications are 1) the removal of blood thinners during and after cardiothoracic surgery to reduce the risk of severe bleeding, and 2) the removal of inflammatory agents and toxins in common critical illnesses that can lead to massive inflammation, organ failure and patient death. The breadth of these critical illnesses includes, for example, sepsis, burn injury, trauma, lung injury, liver failure, cytokine release syndrome, and pancreatitis as well as the removal of liver toxins that accumulate in acute liver dysfunction or failure, and the removal of myoglobin in severe rhabdomyolysis that can otherwise lead to renal failure. In these diseases, the risk of death can be extremely high, and there are few, if any, effective treatments.
