The Pigs Died. Then Scientists Revived Their Cells

The pigs had died. Cardiac arrest is the reason. Their organs began to show signs of life six hours after they were connected to the machine.

Some of the damage caused by the loss of blood flow after death appeared to have been reversed. The pigs had their hearts beat fast. The cells in their organs were working again and showing signs of repair. Cell death could be delayed longer than is currently possible according to the discovery. Saving more organs for transplantation is possible if those processes are slowed down.

Brendan Parent, an assistant professor of bioethics at New York University, who was not involved in the study but authored a commentary in Nature alongside it, said that the new system showed that we can slow down cellular damage, but that we can also reprogram the genes for repair. This could force us to rethink our decision.

The Yale team challenged the idea that brain death is final when they reported that they had partially revived the brains of pigs. The researchers wanted to see if the same method, in which a blood substitute is carried into the animal, could be used to revive other organs.

Nenad Sestan, a Yale neuroscientist, told reporters on a call Tuesday that they restored some functions of cells that should have been dead. The demise of cells can be stopped and their function restored in multiple vital organs, even one hour after death.

One day, the system could be used to expand the pool of human organs available for donation, according to Deepali Kumar, president of the American Society of Transplantation. There is a shortage of organs for transplantation and we need new technologies that can help improve the supply.

17 people die waiting for an organ in the US every day, and 106,000 people are on the national transplant waiting list. 20 percent of organs are discarded annually due to poor quality. It can happen when organs are cut off from an oxygen-rich blood supply for too long.

Cold storage is the standard way to preserve organs for transplant. cooling organs quickly after removal reduces their oxygen demand and can prevent cell death but doesn't save every organ Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, orECMO, is a technique that can be used for patients who can't be resuscitated in order to preserve their organs for transplant. Normally used as life support for patients whose heart or lungs are badly damaged, an ECMO machine pumps blood outside the body to remove carbon dioxide and add oxygen, and then returns it to the body.