Hooking Up Human Lungs to Pigs Could Save Them for Transplant
The technique rejuvenated six damaged lungs
Donated lungs have a short shelf life. After they’re removed from a donor, it’s a race against the clock to get them to a lucky recipient. The delicate, spongy organs are viable for only six to eight hours at most — if they’re suitable for transplant at all.
After a person dies, the lungs are often damaged, inflamed, or filled with fluid. As a result, only about 20% of donated lungs are deemed acceptable for transplant, a lower percentage than other organs, like the kidneys. More than 1,000 people in the United States are currently waiting for a lung transplant. These people may wait months or years to get a new lung.
Researchers at Columbia and Vanderbilt sought to extend that window of viability and buy enough time to reverse the damage using live pigs. By hooking up lungs that had been rejected for transplant to the pigs, the scientists were able to revive the lungs in 24 hours. The new technique could one day expand the number of donor lungs available for transplant, potentially saving more lives. The scientists published their results July 13 in the journal Nature Medicine.
“We were able to repair these lungs and achieve remarkable improvements in their function,” senior author Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, a professor of biomedical engineering and medicine at Columbia University, tells OneZero.
“This approach is very novel and certainly shows promise,” says James Fildes, a transplantation scientist at the University Hospital of South Manchester in the U.K., who wasn’t involved in the work. “A major logistical challenge of lung transplantation is keeping the preservation time as short as possible, as longer times result in poor function following transplant.” But whether it will be feasible in sick patients awaiting transplants still needs to be determined.
The United States performed 2,562 lung transplants in 2018, a 31% jump over the past five years, according to a federal report. Despite that increase, 365 people died while waiting for a lung transplant or became too sick to undergo the procedure. And the number of people needing a lung transplant could soon grow because of the coronavirus pandemic. The virus is known…
