A team of scientists from Yale University (United States) has developed a new technology that supplies a cell-protective fluid specially designed for organs and tissueswith which they have managed to restore blood circulation and other cellular functions in pigs one full hour after their death, according to the magazine ‘Nature’.
Within minutes of the heart’s last beat, a cascade of biochemical events triggered by a lack of blood flow, oxygen and nutrients begins to destroy the body’s cells and organs, but developed technology has allowed this massive and permanent cellular failure does not occur so quickly.
The findings could help prolong the health of human organs during surgery and to expand the availability of donor organs, say the authors.
“All cells don’t die immediately, but there are a series of more prolonged events,” explains David Andrijevic, a research associate scientist in neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine and co-author of the study.. It is a process in which you can intervene, stop and restore some cellular function.”
The research builds on an earlier Yale-led project that restored circulation and certain cellular functions in the brain of a pig killed with a technology called BrainEx. Published in 2019, the study was led by the lab of Yale’s Nenad Sestan, the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Neuroscience, and Professor of Comparative Medicine, Genetics, and Psychiatry.
“If we were able to restore certain cellular functions in the dead brain, an organ known to be the most susceptible to ischemiai.e. inadequate blood supply, we hypothesized that something similar could also be achieved in other vital transplantable organs,” he says.
In the new study, a team led by lead author Sestan — as well as colleagues Andrijevic, Zvonimir Vrselja, Taras Lysyy and Shupei Zhang, all of Yale — applied a modified version of BrainEx called OrganEx to all the pig.
The technology consists of a perfusion device similar to cardiopulmonary bypass machines, which do the work of the heart and lungs during surgery, and an experimental fluid that contains compounds that can promote cellular health and suppress inflammation throughout the body. pig body. Anesthetized pigs were treated with OrganEx one hour after cardiac arrest was induced.
Six hours after OrganEx treatment, the scientists found that key cellular functions were active in many areas of the pigs’ bodies, including the heart, liver and kidneys, and that some organ function had been restored. For example, they found evidence of electrical activity in the heart, which retained the ability to contract. “We were also able to restore circulation throughout the body, which surprised us”Sestan acknowledges.
Normally, when the heart stops beating, the organs begin to swell, collapsing blood vessels and blocking circulation, Explain. However, the organs of the deceased pigs that had received the OrganEx treatment appeared functional. “Under the microscope, it was difficult to distinguish between a healthy organ and one that had been treated with OrganEx technology after death,” says Vrselja.
As in the 2019 experiment, the researchers also found that cellular activity had been restored in some areas of the brain, but no organized electrical activity indicative of consciousness was detected during any part of the experiment.