A team of scientists found that severely injured donor lungs that have been declined for transplant can be recovered outside the body by a system that uses cross-circulation of whole blood between the donor lung and an animal host.

For the first time, a severely injured human lung that failed to recover using the standard clinical EVLP was successfully recovered during 24 hours on the team’s cross-circulation platform. The study is published today in Nature Medicine.

The team shows that explanted human lungs, already declined for transplantation, can be recovered on their cross-circulation platform, which successfully maintained lung integrity and resulted in functional lung recovery. Throughout the 24 hours of cross-circulation, the team saw substantial improvements of cell viability, tissue quality, inflammatory responses and—most importantly—respiratory function.

Get the full story at engineering.columbia.edu.