In Memoriam: Dr. Robert Hawes Bartlett (1939-2025) - Father of Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) and Former CytoSorbents Chief Medical Officer

PRINCETON, N.J., Oct. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- CytoSorbents Corporation (NASDAQ:CTSO), a leader in the treatment of life-threatening conditions in the intensive care unit and cardiac surgery using blood purification, honors the life and legacy of Dr. Robert Hawes Bartlett, MD (1939-2025), the company's former Chief Medical Officer from 2008-2017, who passed away last week at age 86. 

Dr. Bartlett, a renowned cardiothoracic surgeon and Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, was a visionary pioneer and one of the most influential figures in critical care medicine. He was widely recognized as the father of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) - a life-saving technology that temporarily replaces heart and lung function in patients with severe but reversible organ failure.  Over the past half century, ECMO has saved more than 100,000 lives worldwide and is a mainstay of advanced critical care medicine. 

Dr. Phillip Chan, Chief Executive Officer of CytoSorbents, stated, "We are deeply grateful to Dr. Bartlett for his many years of leadership, guidance, and support at CytoSorbents.  He was instrumental in our randomized, controlled European Sepsis Trial, which supported our initial European Union CE mark approval of CytoSorb®.  He also helped to shape our critical care strategy, laying the foundation for CytoSorb to become the leading blood purification platform it is today.  Dr. Bartlett also helped to design and lead our U.S. REFRESH-1 randomized controlled trial, which demonstrated the safety of intraoperative CytoSorb use in cardiothoracic surgery.  This work helped expand the international use of our technology in open-heart surgery, including to reduce the severity of perioperative bleeding in patients on blood thinners – an essential part of our U.S. and Canadian regulatory strategy for DrugSorb™-ATR."

Dr. Chan continued, "Perhaps Dr. Bartlett's most visionary contribution was his early recognition of how CytoSorb could be combined with ECMO to treat severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and achieve 'Enhanced Lung Rest'.  ARDS afflicts hundreds of thousands to over a million patients worldwide each year, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, contributed to nearly 900,000 deaths in the U.S. alone.  ECMO oxygenates blood outside the body, removing the burden of gas exchange from the lungs and reducing mechanical ventilation-induced lung injury - allowing the lungs to rest.  However, ECMO alone does not remove the inflammatory cytokines and toxins that cause capillary leak and drive ongoing lung damage – the central problem in severe ARDS.  But CytoSorb does."

"Under FDA Emergency Use Authorization granted in April 2020, CytoSorb was used throughout the pandemic to treat cytokine storm and severe inflammation in critically ill U.S. adult COVID-19 patients with imminent or confirmed respiratory failure.  Working closely with Dr. Bartlett, we implemented the early use of CytoSorb with ECMO to achieve 'Enhanced Lung Rest' in COVID-19 patients who could not survive on mechanical ventilation alone - with remarkable success.  Historically, ECMO has been used as a salvage 'rescue' therapy for patients with severe ARDS who fail mechanical ventilation.  We share Dr. Bartlett's vision where early intervention with CytoSorb and ECMO could become the primary treatment of severe ARDS in the future – a concept that may represent yet another major advance in his enduring legacy."

Dr. Chan concluded, "For those who knew him, Bob was deeply beloved and a true inspiration.  Despite his many accomplishments and accolades, it would be hard to find someone more knowledgeable yet so humble, approachable, generous, and unfailingly optimistic.  His passion for innovation and his steadfast commitment to helping patients were contagious.  Beyond his pioneering work in ECLS and ECMO, Bob's legacy endures in the countless patients whose lives were saved because of him, and in the thousands of students, residents, fellows, physicians, and researchers he mentored and inspired over the years.  I am privileged to count myself as one of them and will always be grateful to have known such a remarkable man."

Mr. Vincent Capponi, President and Chief Operating Officer of CytoSorbents stated, "I had the great pleasure and honor of working with Dr. Bartlett for more than a decade at CytoSorbents.  With his extraordinary clinical insight and expertise in critical care, we designed and conducted the first clinical trial of CytoSorb in patients with sepsis and ARDS – work that ultimately led to our European approval as a first-in-class extracorporeal cytokine adsorber.  Our long collaboration was driven by a shared passion for innovation and a desire to harness CytoSorb's potential to control the overwhelming and life-threatening inflammation at the core of so many life-threatening critical illnesses.  Dr. Bartlett was a man of conviction, compassion, and unwavering dedication, always placing the well-being of his patients above all else.  Bob, we thank you for all of your outstanding contributions to CytoSorbents and mankind over the years.  You will be deeply missed."

To learn more about Dr. Robert Bartlett's profound impact on medicine and humanity:  

• Read the in-depth tribute from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO), which Dr. Bartlett co-founded in 1989 to advance ECMO research, training, and clinical excellence worldwide.
• Watch Dr. Bartlett's plenary address following his 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), where he humbly recounts the fascinating history of ECLS and ECMO.
• View "The Gibbon's Challenge Fulfilled" video honoring Dr. Bartlett's extraordinary career.

Over his lifetime, Dr. Bartlett published nearly 600 scientific papers and remained a cornerstone of the Extracorporeal Life Support Laboratory at the University of Michigan.  Beyond medicine, Dr. Bartlett was an avid hockey fan and player in his day, and a lifelong musician who played the euphonium and upright bass as part of several performing organizations. 

Those wishing to honor Dr. Bartlett's memory may make a donation here:  Robert H. Bartlett, M.D. - Michigan Giving

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 found in hospitals (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.

CytoSorbents' lead product, CytoSorb®, is approved in the European Union and distributed in over 70 countries worldwide, with nearly 300,000 devices used cumulatively to date.  CytoSorb was originally launched in the European Union under CE mark as the first extracorporeal cytokine adsorber.  Additional CE mark extensions were granted for bilirubin and myoglobin removal in clinical conditions such as liver disease and trauma, respectively, and for ticagrelor and rivaroxaban removal in cardiothoracic surgery procedures.  CytoSorb has also received FDA Emergency Use Authorization in the United States for use in adult critically ill COVID-19 patients with impending or confirmed respiratory failure to reduce inflammatory cytokines.  CytoSorb is not yet approved or cleared in the United States.

In the U.S. and Canada, CytoSorbents is developing the DrugSorb™-ATR antithrombotic removal system, an investigational device based on an equivalent polymer technology to CytoSorb, to reduce the severity of perioperative bleeding in high-risk surgery due to blood thinning drugs.  It has received two FDA Breakthrough Device Designations:  one for the removal of ticagrelor and another for the removal of the direct oral anticoagulants (DOAC) apixaban and rivaroxaban in a cardiopulmonary bypass circuit during urgent cardiothoracic procedures.  The Company is actively pursuing regulatory approval of DrugSorb-ATR with the U.S. FDA and will pursue regulatory approval with Health Canada with better visibility from the FDA.  DrugSorb-ATR is not yet granted or approved in either the U.S. or Canada.

The Company has numerous marketed products and products under development based upon this unique blood purification technology protected by many issued U.S. and international patents and registered trademarks, and multiple patent applications pending, including ECOS-300CY®, CytoSorb-XL™, HemoDefend-RBC™, HemoDefend-BGA™, VetResQ®, K+ontrol™, DrugSorb™, ContrastSorb, and others.

For more information, please visit the Company's website at https://ir.cytosorbents.com/  or follow us on Facebook and X. 

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about our plans, objectives, future targets and outlooks for our business, representations and contentions, and the outcome of our regulatory submissions, and are not historical facts and typically are identified by use of terms such as "may," "should," "could," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "continue" and similar words, although some forward-looking statements are expressed differently. You should be aware that the forward-looking statements in this press release represent management's current judgment and expectations, but our actual results, events and performance could differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors which could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to our ability to successfully obtain U.S. FDA and Health Canada marketing authorization or approval, the ability to grow sales and cut costs, the outcome of the restructuring of our direct sales team and strategy in Germany, our ability to appropriately finance the Company, and the risks discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, filed with the SEC on March 31, 2025, as updated by the risks reported in our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and in the press releases and other communications to shareholders issued by us from time to time which attempt to advise interested parties of the risks and factors which may affect our business.  We caution you not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements.  We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, other than as required under the Federal securities laws.

U.S. Company Contact:

Peter J. Mariani, Chief Financial Officer

305 College Road East

Princeton, NJ 08540

[email protected] 

Investor Relations Contact:

Aman Patel, CFA & Adanna G. Alexander, PhD

ICR Healthcare

[email protected]

 

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SOURCE Cytosorbents Corp