For people who need a lung transplant, the wait is often prolonged by the frustrating fact that most donor organs have to be discarded: Only 20% of donated lungs meet medical criteria for transplantation, translating into far fewer organs than people on waiting lists. Now, a team of researchers has shown they might be able to salvage more of these lungs by borrowing a pig’s circulatory system.
Delicate lungs recovered from donors are typically connected to perfusion machines that keep oxygen and nutrients flowing to maintain viability, but that works for only about six hours, not long enough for often-injured lung tissue to recover before the organ fails.
Matthew Bacchetta of Vanderbilt University and Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic of Columbia University led a team that extended the current six-hour window for lungs outside the body to 24 hours. As they reported Monday in Nature Medicine, they did it by connecting each of five human lungs declined as too damaged for transplantation to a pig, sharing the animal’s liver, kidney, and other functions.