The transplant was a success. American scientists built lungs in the lab and then transplanted them to four adult pigs. None of the animals rejected the organ, they lived between 10 a.m. and two months.
Researchers published the results of what they believe is a big breakthrough in the journal Sciences Translational Medicine. Indeed, in humans, many transplant requests are still pending and they hope that this study will lead to a solution of the same type.
Dr. Joan Nichols, professor of internal medicine and research director, has been working with her team on this artificial lung project for 15 years. In 2014, they had succeeded in making human lungs in the laboratory from the lungs of deceased donors. For the pigs, the researchers removed one lung and left the second.
A network of blood vessels after two weeks
To achieve this, they used a technique called “decellularization”. This involves cleaning the collected lung of cells and blood with a specific mixture of sugar and detergent. Only the proteins constituting the “skeleton” of the lung will resist cleaning.
The protein skeleton is then immersed in a reservoir filled with a mixture of nutrients with the lung cells of the animal. A new lung formed after 30 days in a bioreactor. The four pigs each received a lung. They survived between ten days and two months after the transplant.
They appeared to be in good health. Two weeks after the transplant, the transplanted lung had a network of blood vessels. There was no rejection and the lungs developed without the researchers giving the animals growth factors. Functional efficacy, however, has not yet been proven. Further studies are still needed.
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