After inserting a solution called OrganEx into the veins of pigs that had been dead for an hour, scientists were able to revive cells in the pigs’ organs, according to a study published in Nature. This offers a potential tool to increase the number of organs available for transplantation and raises questions about the definition of death.
Details about the study
The study builds on a previous study by researchers at Yale University in which a device called BrainEx pumped synthetic blood into 32 brains from pigs that had been dead for hours. The researchers observed several signs that the brains regained function after being connected to BrainEx and receiving the solution.
For the new study, Yale researchers inserted the OrganEx solution, which contains nutrients, anti-inflammatory drugs, drugs that prevent cell death, nerve blockers and artificial hemoglobin mixed with each animal’s blood, into the pigs’ veins who had been anaesthetized. and killed an hour earlier.
The researchers found that the hearts of the pigs given OrganEx began to beat and cells in several organs, including their hearts, livers, kidneys and brains, began to function again. They also found that the pigs did not become stiff, as a typical dead pig would.
In comparison, other pigs that had also been dead for an hour and were treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a machine used to pump blood out of the body, oxygenate it and return it to the body , they became stiff, their organs became swollen and damaged, and their blood vessels collapsed.
The potential of organ transplants, treatments
The study authors said they were surprised by OrganEx’s ability to revive cells from dead pig organs.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” said David Andrijevic, a Yale neuroscientist and study author. “Everything we restored was amazing to us.”
The authors said one goal of OrganEx is to ultimately use it to increase the supply of human organs available for transplant.
According to Robert Porte, a transplant surgeon at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, most countries have a “no-touch” policy of five minutes after a patient’s ventilator goes off before transplant surgeons come to extract organs. However, “before they rush to the operating room, it will take extra minutes,” and sometimes organs can end up damaged to the point where they can’t be used, he said.
Because of this, between 50% and 60% of patients who die after life support ends and whose families want to donate their organs cannot be donors, reports the New York Times.
If OrganEx is able to revive these organs, the effect “would be huge,” Porte said, significantly increasing the number of organs available for transplant.
“You can take the organ from a deceased donor and connect it to the perfusion technology, and then maybe be able to transport it over a long distance over a long period of time to get it to a recipient who needs it,” he said. said Stephen Latham. , director of Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and co-author of the study.
Alexandra Glazier, president of New England Donor Services, said the OrganEx system could be “a game changer in dealing with the organ shortage.”
However, Latham cautioned that this research is in the early stages.
“We couldn’t say that this study showed that any of the organs in this pig were … ready for transplant into another animal, we don’t know that they all work, what we’re looking at is the sky and the sky. metabolic levels,” he said. “And we’re nowhere close to being able to say, ‘Oh my God, we’ve not only restored life to this pig, but to any of the individual organs.’ We can’t say that yet. It’s still too early.”
Porte added that OrganEx could also be used to treat heart attack and stroke patients. “One could imagine that the OrganEx system (or its components) could be used to treat these people in an emergency,” he said. “It should be noted, however, that further research will first be needed to confirm the safety of the system’s components in specific clinical situations.”
Latham cautioned, however, that OrganEx’s application is also “quite a ways off.”
“This idea of connecting [a] person who’s had an ischemic injury, you know, someone who’s drowned or had a heart attack, I think it’s pretty far out,” he said. “The much more promising short-term potential use here is with the preservation of organs for transplantation”.
Ethical issues
Some experts also said the study raises ethical questions about the definition of death.
Nita Farahany, a law professor at Duke University who studies the ethical, legal and social implications of emerging technologies, called the study “amazing, mind-blowing.”
“We presume that death is a thing, it’s a state of being,” he said. “Are there forms of death that are reversible? Or not?”
Brendan Parent, a lawyer, ethicist and director of transplant ethics and policy research at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, said the study raises “complicated questions about life and death.”
“By the accepted medical and legal definition of death, these pigs were dead,” he said. But, he added, “a critical question is: What function and what kind of function would change things?”
Parent also said that OrganEx creates an ethical dilemma between weighing how useful the technology can be in increasing the supply of transplantable organs and how it can be used by doctors on dying patients.
“We have an ethical duty to prioritize its development to save lives before considering how it can benefit organ transplantation,” he said. (Kolata, New York Times, 8/3; Marcus, Wall Street Journal, 8/3; Hunt, CNN, 8/3)