Artificial lungs breathe new hope for transplants

Artificial lungs breathe new hope for transplants


First it was the heart, then the liver - now two research teams have grown artificial lungs that function in rats. It is hoped that a similar technique could one day engineer donor organs for humans.

A lung transplant is the only option for people with terminal lung disease caused by conditions like cystic fibrosis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But donor organs are in short supply, and rejection is likely even if a lung becomes available.

In a quest to solve both problems, teams from Harvard Medical School in Boston and Yale University, working separately, stripped donor rat lungs of their original tissue by exposing them to a mild detergent. The teams then repopulated the remaining "scaffold" of connective tissue with foetal stem cells and incubated the organs in nutrients to help them grow.

The new lungs were then "replumbed" into rat recipients. The regenerated lungs resembled native lungs in size and oxygenated the recipient's blood for up to six hours, after which oedema - accumulation of fluid within the lung - and capillary leakage occurred.



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