Pablo Sanchez
University of Chicago, IL·Biomedical Engineering
Donor lungs for transplant can be kept outside the body for no more than about 8 hours using standard cold storage. Even within that window, the lungs lose quality, which raises the risk of primary graft dysfunction: failure of the new lung soon after transplant, which can lead to chronic rejection.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
- Topics
lung transplantation
LTx
ex vivo lung perfusion
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Test whether the liver function of a whole pig, connected to donor lungs by cross-circulation, explains the improved lung recovery seen during ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP), in which lungs are kept warm and ventilated outside the body.
- Add a hepatocyte bioreactor, a device that keeps liver cells working outside the body, to EVLP circuits. Test whether it improves lung preservation and short-term transplant outcomes in rats.
- Repeat the bioreactor-assisted EVLP experiments in human lungs from deceased donors to see whether the benefits seen in rats carry over to human tissue.
- Measure inflammation in the lungs, including RAGE and NF-κB signaling, along with gene activity and function in both the lung tissue and the bioreactor's liver cells.
More about the research
About half of lung transplant patients do not survive five years. One alternative is ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP). In EVLP, donor lungs are kept at body temperature, with fluid pumped through their blood vessels and air pumped into them. The drawback is that warm lungs stay metabolically active. Toxic byproducts build up and trigger inflammation through RAGE (a receptor that senses damaged molecules) and NF-κB (a switch that turns on inflammatory genes). This limits how long EVLP can work.
Why it matters
If successful, this approach could let donor lungs be preserved well beyond 8 hours with less cell damage. Lungs could then travel farther and stay viable longer, which could help shorten lung transplant waiting lists. Lungs that are in better condition at the time of transplant may also improve long-term survival for transplant recipients, half of whom currently die within five years.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Marian Urban
University of Nebraska Medical Center, NE·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether perfusing a donor heart first with a cardioprotective solution, rather than fully oxygenated blood, improves heart function after in-situ reanimation, measured by echocardiography and blood-flow and pressure readings in a pig model.
Chitaru Kurihara
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether integrated stress response activation of ATF4, a stress-induced gene regulator, is necessary for impaired alveolar epithelial repair after lung transplantation, using mouse transplant models.
Jonathan Singer
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Determine how sarcopenic obesity, sarcopenia and high body fat affect perioperative complications and patient-reported outcomes at 6 months in 803 lung transplant candidates, with body composition measured by bioelectrical impedance analysis.
The school
University of Chicago: 39 labs on PI Pages, $681M a year on research, 457 research doctorates a year.
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