Sepsis, an acute inflammation triggered by infection, is a leading cause of childhood mortality, claiming roughly 3 million children under the age of five annually. Efferon, a startup selected as one of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026’s Startup Battlefield 200, is on a mission to drastically lower that number. The company has developed a medical device that it claims lowers organ failure rates and significantly accelerates recovery in children.
The Challenge of Sepsis
When standard treatments like antibiotics cannot stop the immune system’s overreaction, a patient’s blood must be filtered to remove deadly toxins. That is where Efferon’s devices, which absorb dangerous cytokines and toxins, step in to make a critical difference. Dima Romashin, Efferon’s co-founder and CEO, compares what happens in the body during sepsis to a fire, where an immune response overwhelms the body rapidly.
““In a fire, there are two things: the flame itself and smoke that it produces,” he told TechCrunch. “In sepsis, endotoxins are the flames and cytokines are the smoke.”
