TEDMED 2010: 'Superorgans' Could Revolutionize Transplants

Imagine: Two lungs are removed from a person and replaced with the lungs of another human being. And the body survives. It's a medical marvel, said Shaf Keshavjee, M.D., a thoracic surgeon and director of Toronto Lung Transplant Program, at TEDMED.

But, he added, "It's not a perfect science yet." Organ transplantation can be a rocky road, for both patients and doctors. The recipient's body often sees the new organ as a foreign object and attempts to reject it.

"What I'd like to do is really stretch your mind, to see where we're going in the future with organ replacement," said Keshavjee. "I'm going to talk about engineering superogans."

Superorgans are genetically modified organs that are better prepared to deal with the stress of the transplant process. Keshavjee and his team figured out a way to keep an organ alive outside the body, at normal temperature, long enough to assess it and treat it.

"We've really taken the system, totally, and turned it around," said Keshavjee. Here's how it works:

To demonstrate, Keshavjee rolled a machine out onto the TEDMED stage with a live pig lung on it -- swelling up and down with breath. He invited a few audience members to touch it. The cutting-edge technology gives doctors time to identify any specific problems with the organ, treat it with targeted gene therapy, cell therapy, drugs and medication, and then transplant a known product into the recipient.

"Now this looks like science fiction to you, but it's not," said Keshavjee. "We're doing this today. We have transplanted 30 patients using this technique -- using lungs that we wouldn't have used."

Learn more about this new technology, and see what a pair of breathing lungs look like, below.

WATCH:

Comments

[JackHoffman]

07:21 PM on 02/02/2011

To all the Islamophobics out there. Dr. K, whose first name is Shafique, is a Muslim who has saved 100's if not 1000's of lives and has affected the lives of tens of thousands around the world regardless of race or religion in a positive manner.

More stories like this please!

[drjasonmd]

06:21 PM on 02/01/2011

Immortality here we come.

[AngryBuddist]

01:16 AM on 02/02/2011

Unfortunately for us we will have missed it by Thiiiiiiiiiis much..... >

[SionShankel]

03:58 PM on 01/31/2011

This is so great!!!!!!!!

[StAlphonso]

11:40 AM on 01/31/2011

Ah, my porn career is slowly becoming a reality.

[MsVella]

11:53 AM on 02/01/2011

Lol what?

[drjasonmd]

06:20 PM on 02/01/2011

Think about it . . .

[Toonguy]

11:05 AM on 01/31/2011

I find the other technology about using existing organs as a template equally interesting. They remove all of the cells, leaving a protein skeleton. Then they add new cells grown from the recipient. There's no rejection. Pretty cool.

[EvolveorPerish]

05:45 PM on 01/31/2011

That process uses your own cells/dna to recreate an organ, so its actually "your" organ grown from culture. No chance of rejection. I think that one will really be the new transplant technology far surpassing donor organs.
Less creepy, also. I'd rather had my own lungs grown anew than someone's with history I know nothing about or treated with drugs, chemicals, or genetic engineering.

Far out, but so very cool.

[SiriusMrE]

03:52 PM on 02/01/2011

Yeah, I had just seen the movie Repo Men the day before I saw this story on PBS. I felt one way at the end of the movie--sad and somewhat down, because of the movie's commentary on the medical industrial complex as well as the issues of the cost of health care; but, I felt a completely different way after seeing the segment about the template technology on NOVA ScienceNOW. Between that process the one in the story, these look like real advancements in not organ transplant, but organ replacement. Exciting!

[Sue Bryant]

04:57 PM on 02/02/2011

For sure. I had a kidney transplant 16 years ago, and I know I will need another one someday. How wonderful it would be to not have to worry about where to find that kidney, if one could be made that was less likely to reject. Wow, just wow... The transplant itself was life changing, this would change it yet again.

[Howmanyreally]

10:26 AM on 01/31/2011

I love science.

[Smirk]

09:56 AM on 01/31/2011

Amazing.