Thomas Egan

The lung doesn't die when you do. Lung cells do not rely on blood perfusion for cellular respiration. So lung cells live for hours after circulatory arrest and deah of an individual. Our lab has shown that lungs could be transplanted with good function if recovered one hour after death from non-ventilated deceased donors. Duration of tolerable ischemia could be enhanced by ventilation of a deceased animal with oxygen. In subsequest studies we showed that oxygen ventilation of a dead animal was associated with delayed lung parenchymal cell death, ultrasructural integrity, and maintenance of total adenine nucleotide levels. We used ex-vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) to evaluate lungs recovered from uncontrolled Donation after Circulatory Death Donors (uDCDDs), formerly known as Maastricht Category 1 & 2 non-heart-beating donors. I have IRB and FDA approval to offer suitable lungs for transplant. Funding was withdrawn because of failure to meet ambitious milestones. We have translational rat lung transplant and rat lung EVLP circuits, and cell culture models of lung IRI. We have developed a mouse lung transplant model, and have performed EVLP and transplant of swine lungs in a brain-dead donor model.