Artificial Lung now breathes

Artificial Lung Now Breathes Real Oxygen

( The world might soon be able to breathe easier. Researchers in Cleveland, have come up with a portable artificial lung so advanced that it can use “regular air rather than the pure oxygen required by current artificial lungs,” according to a report from Popular Science .

Joseph Potkay and scientists at Case Western Reserve University are the brains behind the new organ, which has been closely modeled after healthy human lungs, even with miniature artificial blood vessels. This small-scale bio-mimicking provides a “much better surface-area-to-volume ratio, lending the device its higher oxygen exchange efficiency,” according to the PopSci report. Its small size means it could be implanted in recipients and fueled by the heart so it wouldn’t require any additional power supply.

Though more research is required before it can be used on patients, the new technology is a breakthrough, according to reports, because it will offer hope and treatment options to the 200 million people across the globe currently suffering from lung disease. Potkay and other researchers hope that the artificial device will eventually function as efficiently as healthy human lungs.

The Royal Society of Chemistry , a U.K.-based group dedicated to the promotion of science, noted in a recent report that current models of mechanical respiration depend on artificial ventilators that circulate a patient’s blood through a device which then adds oxygen. Jeffery Borenstein, a researcher at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, told the RSC that, “current technology involves complex systems that are limited to intensive care units.” He also noted that Potkay’s device has “the potential to provide clinically relevant oxygenation levels using ambient air, opening the door to portable systems.”

The blogosphere seems to be buzzing with a wide range of reactions to the new breathing apparatus. Comments posted to cnet.com ’s coverage included both supportive and snide interpretations of the story. User Vitality_Russian spoke out in favor, yet with curiosity about the device: 

“That is a remarkable invention, but makes me wonder how something artificial cannot have any side effects.” On the other hand, other users had even more cynical retorts, as user annodomini2 said, “Brains in jars here we come.”
No matter how you feel about Potkay’s artificial breathing technology, it might have the potential to change the way lung conditions are treated.

A full study about the recent findings was published in the journal Lab on a Chip .

Read more: http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpps/dpg_original/artificial-lung-now-breathes-real-oxygen-dpgoh-20110728-ch_14325690#ixzz1TTDmyau2


click to read the complete article artificial lung now breathes rea oxygen

Scientists Grow New Lungs

Scientists Grow New Lungs Using 'Skeletons' of Old Ones

 For someone with a severe, incurable lung disorder such as cystic fibrosis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung transplant may be the only chance for survival. Unfortunately, it's often not a very good chance. Matching donor lungs are rare, and many would-be recipients die waiting for the transplants that could save their lives

Such deaths could be prevented if it were possible to use stem cells to grow new lungs or lung tissue. Specialists in the emerging field of tissue engineering have been hard at work on this for years. But they've been frustrated by the problem of coaxing undifferentiated stem cells to develop into the specific cell types that populate different locations in the lung.

Now, researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have demonstrated a potentially revolutionary solution to this problem. As they describe in an article published electronically ahead of print by the journal Tissue Engineering Part A, they seeded mouse embryonic stem cells into "acellular" rat lungs -- organs whose original cells had been destroyed by repeated cycles of freezing and thawing and exposure to detergent.

The result: empty lung-shaped scaffolds of structural proteins on which the mouse stem cells thrived and differentiated into new cells appropriate to their specific locations.
"In terms of different cell types, the lung is probably the most complex of all organs -- the cells near the entrance are very different from those deep in the lung," said Dr. Joaquin Cortiella, one of the article's lead authors. "Our natural matrix generated the same pattern, with tracheal cells only in the trachea, alveoli-like cells in the alveoli, pneumocytes only in the distal lung, and definite transition zones between the bronchi and the alveoli."
Such "site-specific" cell development has never been seen before in a natural matrix, said professor Joan Nichols, another of the paper's lead authors. The complexity gives the researchers hope that the concept could be scaled up to produce replacement tissues for humans -- or used to create models to test therapies and diagnostic techniques for a variety of lung diseases.
"If we can make a good lung for people, we can also make a good model for injury," Nichols said. "We can create a fibrotic lung, or an emphysematous lung, and evaluate what's happening with those, what the cells are doing, how well stem cell or other therapy works. We can see what happens in pneumonia, or what happens when you've got a hemorrhagic fever, or tuberculosis, or hantavirus -- all the agents that target the lung and cause damage in the lung."

The researchers have already begun work on large-scale experiments, "decellularizing" pig lungs with an eye toward using them to produce larger samples of lung tissue that could lead to applications in humans. They're also taking on the challenge of vascularization -- stimulating the growth of blood vessels that will enable the engineered tissues to survive outside the special bioreactors that the researchers now use to keep them alive by bathing them in a life-sustaining cocktail of nutrients and oxygen.

"People ask us why we're doing the lung, because it's so hard," Cortiella said. "But the potential is so great, and the technology is here. It's going to take time, but I think we're going to create a system that works."

Other authors of the Tissue Engineering Part A paper are UTMB research associate Jean Niles, associate professor Gracie Vargas, medical student Sean Winston, graduate student Shannon Walls, summer research fellows Andrea Brettler and Jennifer Wang, Andrea Cantu of Stanford University and Dr. Anthony Pham of Brown Medical School.

cllick to read the complete article at Science Daily.com

growing new alveoli and pulmonary vessels/ regenerate or recreate lung

Human Lung Stem Cell Discovered: Crucial Role in Tissue Regeneration

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2011) 

For the first time, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have identified a human lung stem cell that is self-renewing and capable of forming and integrating multiple biological structures of the lung including bronchioles, alveoli and pulmonary vessels. This research is published in the May 12, 2011 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

click to read on this new pprocess for creating lungs /alveoli

"This research describes, for the first time, a true human lung stem cell. The discovery of this stem cell has the potential to offer those who suffer from chronic lung diseases a totally novel treatment option by regenerating or repairing damaged areas of the lung," said Piero Anversa, MD, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and corresponding author.

Using lung tissue from surgical samples, researchers identified and isolated the human lung stem cell and tested the functionality of the stem cell both in vitro and in vivo. Once the stem cell was isolated, researchers demonstrated in vitro that the cell was capable of dividing both into new stem cells and also into cells that would grow into various types of lung tissue. Next, researchers injected the stem cell into mice with damaged lungs. The injected stem cells differentiated into new bronchioles, alveoli and pulmonary vessel cells which not only formed new lung tissue, but also integrated structurally to the existing lung tissue in the mice.

The researchers define this cell as truly "stem" because it fulfills the three categories necessary to fall under stem cell categorization: first, the cell renews itself; second, it forms into many different types of lung cells; and third, it is transmissible, meaning that after a mouse was injected with the stem cells and responded by generating new tissue, researchers were then able to isolate the stem cell in the treated mouse, and use that cell in a new mouse with the same results.

"These are the critical first steps in developing clinical treatments for those with lung disease for which no therapies exist. Further research is needed, but we are excited about the impact this discovery could have on our ability to regenerate or recreate new lung tissues to replace damaged areas of the lungs," said Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Medicine at BWH and co-author.

This research was funded through grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

New Artificial lung technology ??

Lung implant is a breath of fresh air

14 December 2010

Artificial lung technology could reduce the death rate for patients awaiting a lung transplant, say US scientists.

Advanced lung disease is characterised by an inability to remove carbon dioxide from the blood and reduced oxygen uptake efficiency. A shortage of donors can mean long delays and high mortality rates for those awaiting a transplant. The only technology available to aid sufferers during this time is based in intensive care units, hindering quality of life.
Now, Joseph Vacanti and coworkers at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, have developed a device that achieves the CO₂/O₂ gas exchange that, when implanted in the body, could allow patients more freedom when awaiting a transplant. Their design is a microfluidic branched vascular network through which blood flows, separated from a gas-filled chamber by a silicone membrane less than 10um thick. The network is formed by casting polydimethylsiloxane, a biocompatible polymer, on a micro machined mould
.

A major challenge faced by Vacanti's team was achieving a blood pressure within the device's channels similar to that in veins and arteries. They applied computational fluid dynamics to optimise the vascular network's structure to avoid clotting induced by excessive blood pressure. 'Fulfilment of these design criteria necessitated creating channels that had variable depth throughout the network and also had precise curvature,' says Vacanti's coworker, David Hoganson.

Vacanti's device could be scaled up for implantation. According to Hoganson, an implant-sized device could be fabricated by 'stacking the functional layers of the device to achieve the necessary surface area for gas exchange'.

Jaisree Moorthy, who specialises in using microfluidics in tissue engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, says that Vacanti's device provides a very elegant solution. Compared to existing devices, Moorthy comments that it 'is more efficient due to a thinner membrane, and mimics the biological CO₂/O₂ transfer rate'.

In the future, Vacanti hopes to develop the device further to incorporate engineered lung tissue.
Erica Wise


click for more info on this new approach toward a artificial lung

Progress made toward a artificial lung device

No more oxygen for artificial lung

14 July 2011

US scientists have mimicked the structure of a lung to make a device that can use air as a ventilating gas instead of pure oxygen. The invention could mean that oxygen cylinders to accompany artificial lung devices for lung disease patients are a thing of the past and implantable devices could be a step closer. 

Joseph Potkay from Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Centre and co-workers fashioned microfluidic channels from the polymer polydimethylsiloxane and made them branch into smaller channels and then into artificial capillaries, similar to the arteries and capillaries in a real lung. They added blood and air flow outlets and inlets and coated all the channels in a polydimethylsiloxane gas exchange membrane.

The team tested the device with pig blood. As the blood flowed through the device from the blood inlet, they fed air into the air inlet and as it travelled along the channels, oxygen molecules diffused across the gas exchange membrane into the blood on the way to the blood outlet. Meanwhile, blood coming from the inlet would be rich in carbon dioxide, which would diffuse across the membrane and travel to the air outlet.

They found that the device 'exhibited larger oxygen exchange efficiencies than current devices in which pure oxygen is needed, enabling air to be used as the ventilating gas,' says Potkay. The oxygen exchange efficiency is three to five times better than current artificial lung devices owing to the small, micron-scale, blood and air channels. This is the first demonstration that features as small as those found in the lungs are effective.

The artificial lung device consists of small microfluidic channels, similar in size to blood vessels in real lungs, with a membrane for oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange

At the moment, lung disease patients in need of respiratory support rely on mechanical ventilators in which blood from the patient is circulated through a machine to oxygenate it. As  Jeffrey Borenstein, an expert in microsystems technology and biomedical devices at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, US, points out: 'Current technology involves complex systems that are limited to intensive care units, so Potkay's device has the potential to provide clinically relevant oxygenation levels using ambient air, opening the door to portable systems.'

The team aims to improve their device's blood compatibility and scale it up so it can deliver enough oxygen to be suitable for humans.
Holly Sheahan

click for more info at Chemistry World

QUADROX D oxygenation system

The innovative dimension of our QUADROX D oxygenation system is exceptional in modern perfusion.

Engineered for minimum priming volume and foreign surface contact, its classic concept, brilliant perfomance, and versatility continue to lead the way. And as perfusion technology becomes more sophisticated, the QUADROX D is setting forward-looking standards in every refined detail. Its unique square design and special flow geometry provide extraordinary performance which the perfusionist will appreciate, and its optimum functional flexibility assures improved patient care. The QUADROX D is at your side, safe and dependable: An unbeatable classic. The oxygenation system designed for perfusionists needs: Exceptionally low pressure drop Particularly low priming volume Minimized foreign surface contact Excellent O2 and CO2 transfer performance Highly efficient heat exchanger Optimum surface refinement with standard SAFELINE Coating or optional BIOLINE Coating

click to see more info on this artificial lung machine

quick video on new artificial lung QUADROX used on a baby in Michigan

Newborn is First to Receive Artificial Lung at St. Louis Children's Hospital




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link to new artificial lung Quadrox

baby using artificial lung

4-week-old baby using artificial lung

A newborn baby from Michigan is being kept alive with an artificial lung, it's the first of it's kind. 4-week-old Ronan Bush haas a rare congenital disease that prevetns his blood from flowing properly through his lungs. He needs 2 lung transplants.

see a quick video of the baby usong a artifical lung.....

click yo see this video on the artifical lung

4-week-old baby needs lung transplant

4-week-old baby needs lung transplant

First Totally Artificial Windpipe

In a milestone for the fast-evolving field of tissue engineering, a 36-year-old geology student from Africa is breathing through a synthetic windpipe created in a laboratory from plastic and his own bone marrow cells.

Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene was discharged today from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, one day short of a month since he had his cancerous windpipe replaced with the custom-made spare part.

"It's working like a normal windpipe," surgeon Paolo Macchiarini told Shots. "He's able to cough. He's able to expel his secretions. He's breathing normally. He has the sensation he's breathing."


click to read the complete news on a Cancer-Patient Gets FirstTotally Artificial Windpipe