Experiment Restores Cell And Organ Functions to Dead Pigs, Hours After They Died

The body's organs and cells rely on blood to function. If the blood flow stops, the cells will die and the organs will be damaged.

The death can be slowed by the removal of organs and tissues. It can be difficult to preserve organs minutes after the heart stops pumping.

An extracorporeal membrane oxygenation system is a method that pumps blood into a machine that removes carbon dioxide from it. Every minute of delay allows the damage to build.

A new system has been shown to restore some organ, cellular, and molecular function in dead pigs, and to preserve their tissues, even when the treatment is only initiated one hour after cardiac arrest.

BrainEx is a technology that can be used to restore function in pig brains hours after death.

The OrganEx system is meant for large mammals.

There is a machine and a fluid.

The machine is in motion. Oxygenates the fluid by creating a pulse similar to a heartbeat. The way it adds drugs to aid circulation is different from the other way around.

The machine has many sensors for important features of circulation.

It pumps synthetic fluid, mixed with the animal's own blood, through the dead animal's entire body. The fluid is designed to protect cells from harm and carry oxygen and drugs throughout the body.

(David Andrijevic, Zvonimir Vrselja, Taras Lysyy, Shupei Zhang; Sestan Laboratory; Yale School of Medicine)

There are images of electrocardiogram tracings in the heart, albumin in the liver, and actin in the kidneys. The left and right images show the organs that were subjected to a control and OrganEx technology.

One hour after cardiac arrest, the system was tested in pigs, as well as control groups in which organ functions were tested immediately after cessation of blood flow. The tissues continued to process fuel and generate waste.

The system was developed with the help of one hundred pigs.

The researchers found OrganEx can preserve the integrity of tissue, reduce cell death, and revive certain cellular processes.

OrganEx performed better thanECMO. The researchers observed gene expression patterns specific to repair processes within certain organs and cell types.

The team looked at the architecture of the cells in the brain.

In some parts of the brain, minimal damage had occurred, and the cells had been recovered to the same levels as the group that had not been exposed to warm ischemia.

Recovering organ function was a major test of the experiment.

The brain function was measured As brain death is the main definition of death in clinical settings, the scientists were adamant to distinguish between the brain functions they detected and electrical activity which indicated some level of life.

While brain death persisted in the OrganEx group, the bodies showed some head and neck movement after contrast injection, which helps show more detail in neuroimaging, into the carotid arteries in the neck, which deliver blood to the brain and head. The movement did not happen in animals that were snoozing.

The researchers want to understand why head and neck movements happened after contrast injection only in the OrganEx group.

They don't know why this happened, but it shows that the motor function output had been preserved in the spine.

The left ventricle cells were seen in the OrganEx group that were not seen in theECMO group.

The organs that showed some signs of recovery were the liver and kidneys.

The researchers think OrganEx has a lot of potential for human organ transplants. It is hoped that it will improve the time an organ intended for transplant can be preserved, which will allow organs to be transported further away from recipients in need.

The ability of the mammal to partially recover after an interruption in blood flow could increase organ availability for transplantation.

Further studies are needed to fully understand the potential of OrganEx to aid cellular recovery after death.

The research was published in a scientific journal.