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Damaged Human Lungs Can Be Repaired by Attaching Them to Pigs, Experiment Shows:
The sad reality of terminal lung illnesses is that there are simply far more patients than there are donor lungs available. This isn't just because of the low number of donors, which would be problem enough, but many donor lungs are significantly damaged, rendering them unusable.
By using a new experimental technique, though, such a damaged lung has now been restored to function - by sharing its circulatory system with that of a living pig. This leverages the body's self-repair mechanisms to exceed the capabilities of current donor lung restoration techniques.
"It is the provision of intrinsic biological repair mechanisms over long-enough periods of time that enabled us to recover severely damaged lungs that cannot otherwise be saved," say the lead researchers, surgeon Ahmed Hozain and biomedical engineer John O'Neill of Columbia University.
[...] In 2017, O'Neill led the development of the xenogeneic (cross-species) cross-circulation platform. Last year, two of the researchers, biomedical engineer Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic of Columbia University and surgeon Matthew Bacchetta of the Vanderbilt Lung Institute, led a study in which they restored damaged pig lungs by attaching them to other pigs.
Earlier this year, the team extended the operation time of the platform to four days.
Now, the researchers have revealed that they have successfully used the same technique to repair five damaged human lungs by connecting them to pigs, including one severely injured lung that had failed to recover function using EVLP.
"We were able to recover a donor lung that failed to recover on the clinical ex vivo lung perfusion system, which is the current standard of care," Vunjak-Novakovic said. "This was the most rigorous validation of our cross-circulation platform to date, showing great promise for its clinical utility."
[...] It's not quite ready for clinical use, though. For one, the pigs could share things other than their blood. Like disease, for instance.
Because of this, any clinical use of the technique would require medical-grade animals, which would not be cheap - but it's nonetheless something that is under investigation for use in xenotransplantation, in which pigs' organs can be transplanted in human recipients. (This is currently being tested in baboons.)
The other option is that the human recipients themselves could potentially become the basis for the cross-circulation platform, being attached to the lungs they will themselves receive, and maybe even other kinds of organs one day.
"Modifications to the xenogeneic cross-circulation circuit could enable investigation and recovery of other human organs, including livers, hearts, kidneys and limbs," the researchers wrote in their paper.
"Ultimately, we envision that xenogeneic cross-circulation could be utilised as both a translational research platform to augment transplantation research and as a biomedical technology to help address the organ shortage by enabling the recovery of previously unsalvageable donor organs."
Journal Reference:
Ahmed E. Hozain, John D. O’Neill, Meghan R. Pinezich, et al. Xenogeneic cross-circulation for extracorporeal recovery of injured human lungs, Nature Medicine (DOI: 10.1038/s41591-020-0971-8)
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday July 14 2020, @09:26PM (18 children)
As I understand it, transplanted lungs usually only prolong someone's life for around five years. Does that justify what sounds like some quite significant animal cruelty? I'm not convinced.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by legont on Tuesday July 14 2020, @10:01PM (4 children)
Cancer treatment considered a success if it prolongs life for 6 months. I am sure covid will get the same morality base.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Wednesday July 15 2020, @12:07AM (2 children)
Covid already has a different morality base, namely: "it only kills people with pre-existing conditions, which means they were going to die soon anyway".
Now, actually, it doesn't, it only mostly kills those people and the vast majority of people with "pre-existing conditions" aren't going to die any time soon, unless they get covid, BUT the real kicker is this:
If Covid doesn't kill you it can still (and, it seems, very frequently does in those who are hospitalised) leave you with one or all of:
* lung damage (for fun, look up the prognosis and life expectancy for pulmonary fibrosis)
* kidney damage (oh good, dialysis for life, maybe not for long though...)
* nuked pancreas (yup, type 1 diabetes)
* permanent heart damage
...and a bunch of other stuff
Now, when Covid comes around again, as it surely will because the world is full of fuckwits spreading it because trying not to infringes their freedoms, it'll be no problem because the survivors will be immune. Er, nope, not looking like it, looking like immunity is 3-6 months, maybe a year, maybe if we're really really lucky 2-3years like SARS-1. Think our species will have acquired a clue, globally, by then? - er, nope, so no immunity.
When those survivors get it again, they will now have a "pre-existing condition" - look at the list of what covid leaves you with, and look up the will-probably-die-of-covid risk factors. Surviving it is just the start of your problems, when it comes round for another bite you have to survive it again, and maybe again and again. Think common cold, but much much more deadly.
So.... the punchline is, when those survivors get it again, and are much much more likely to die, they won't matter, because... "they had a pre-existing condition, which means they were going to die soon anyway".
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday July 15 2020, @12:28AM
When I was a kid long time ago it was, pneumonia was considered a chronic disease. Whoever got it was way more likely to get it again; reasons unknown.
I expect this one to be the same. All the "survivors", regardless of age, will die relatively soon.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:37AM
Stupidity is a pre-existing condition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @01:42AM
Depending upon the type, that could be a doubling of the life expectency when diagnosed. My Uncle was diagnosed with leukemia near the end of February and died the first of the next July, which was like 4 months later. But for less aggressive cancers, like my mother's breast cancer which took the cells they missed the first time roughly 16 years to divide enough to be detectable again, 6 months would be an absolutely ridiculous yardstick to use.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2020, @10:06PM (1 child)
So we can turn the pig into bacon, but not use them for growing or repairing human organs?
All pigs are bastards. Fuck them.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2020, @10:24PM
Yeah, fuck the pigs. #BLM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2020, @10:50PM (6 children)
Considering that the main other use for pigs is food and leather, this doesn't really seem so bad.
In the longterm, I'm sure they're going to work on figuring out how to build a machine that can keep these organs in good working order until they're ready for implantation. There are a number of reasons why that would be preferable including being able to have a couple of the machines on hand, increased predictability about the outcome and reduced chances of their being some infectious agent that slipped by the screening process.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:13AM (5 children)
The pig isn't keeping the lung in good working order. The pig is repairing damaged lungs. I really don't think we have any machines that can repair damaged organs yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 15 2020, @03:44AM
We also don't have ones that can maintain them as is at the present time, that would really be the first step. Once we've got ones that can maintain them as is, then there's the possibility of repairing them.
It kind of reminds me of that person with the heart that received a temporary artificial one to take the strain off the actual heart. The heart did heal itself to some extent when it wasn't being stressed as much. No idea to what extent that could apply here, but both the lungs and the heart get basically no time off, they both have to be going constantly or you lose consciousness and die pretty quickly.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday July 15 2020, @12:40PM (3 children)
It may be as simple as taking a large quantity of fresh pig blood, keeping it oxygenated, and perfusing the organ with it. Since the treatment is only 24 hours, all the necessary repair factors may be present in sufficient quantity in the blood itself. You may have to add immunosuppressors.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday July 15 2020, @02:05PM (2 children)
What you're suggesting is what has been done for many years:
FTFA: "The underlying principle is similar to an existing donor lung restoration technique called ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP), which involves placing a lung in a sterile dome attached to a ventilator, pump, and filters."
and had been done on the experimental lungs, including a set that were very damaged but mostly recovered after the pig connection.
This new experiment suggests that there's likely higher level of repair being done by the pig's systems (seems obvious to me anyway) like liver, kidneys, endocrines, nutrients, on and on.
Also FTFA, the pigs had to be immunosuppressed (of course). For control they did not immunosuppress one pig and those lungs developed inflammation, clots, low O2 sat., etc.- all typical signs of rejection.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday July 16 2020, @11:32AM (1 child)
You left off the most important part of your quote [pennmedicine.org]: "... and treated with a bloodless solution that contains nutrients, proteins, and oxygen."
My contention is that by using actual blood from a pig, the additional curative factors in play may already be present without the need for the rest of the pig, particularly if you use a 'once-thru' (or perhaps just a few passes thru) process instead of recycling and re-oxygenating the blood continuously.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday July 16 2020, @02:08PM
Thanks, and what you wrote makes sense.
For the record, I did not leave anything off: I quoted from TFA. You got more from another source, and that's great.
Again, I get where you're going; I'm suggesting maybe there's a dynamic process happening. Maybe the liver, or something else, or many things in the pig, are responding to something- trace enzyme, or who knows (I'm not a biologist) that's triggering a "produce a repair enzyme (or whatever it is)" response.
A great example is infection. There's a normal range for white cell count in blood analysis. So my blood won't help someone who has an infection but has a weak immune system. And the infection doesn't have to be blood-borne, but somehow something the infection gives off (enzymes?) triggers a response in the immune system.
If I'm right, and researchers can figure out what the lung-healing enzymes (or whatever it is) are, then we shouldn't have to connect to a live pig.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 15 2020, @12:53AM (3 children)
How is it animal cruelty if the animal is unconscious? Would you feel better if they butchered it after it had outlived its usefulness as an organ host? Then it could live the normal life of a pig - be born, grow to adolescence, get butchered to provide a bit of temporary life extension to humans (aka food - factory-farmed pigs are such an overwhelming majority that they define normal). Only instead of immediately being butchered it could spend a few days or weeks deeply unconscious, providing many years of additional human life extension. I suspect that lab-grade pigs would live a marginally less miserable brief life than factory-farmed pigs as well.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 15 2020, @05:34PM (2 children)
I skim-read TFA and didn't find any mention of them being unconscious. I didn't look any further than that.
That's not much of a defense. I think factory farming of animals is horrendous. At least you're acknowledging the possibility of some degree of misery. Most labs I've seen with conscious animals seemed to house them in pretty sparse, small areas.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 15 2020, @07:05PM (1 child)
> The five lungs in the experiment were attached via a jugular cannula to anaesthetised pigs that had been immunosuppressed,...
And really it seems pretty mandatory - a conscious pig is going to be moving, and would likely damage the connection to the lung.
>That's not much of a defense.
I agree, however it's the unfortunate reality of the life of pigs. So long as factory farming of millions of pigs is permitted for the pleasure of eating pork, criticizing similar conditions for a few hundred animals to saves someone's life is deeply hypocritical. And as cramped and miserable as a lab environment is likely to be, it's still likely to be better than a tiny pen where they have to lie in their own excrement.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday July 15 2020, @07:56PM
Thanks. I missed that bit. If they're anaesthetised in the lab, it remains an open question how long they are confined there before that happens.
I agree, but since I'm strongly opposed to factory farming, I'm not sure how such hypocrisy is relevant.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?