Biomedical Frontiers: Winter 1994, Vol.1, No.2
Finding Organ Solutions

Increasing the time organs are maintained outside the body is an important issue for transplantation research. Available organ preservation solutions provide only a four to six hour window in which tissue and surgical preparation can occur.

Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center scientists have now developed a new organ preservation solution that extends the time organs can stay ex vivo. The solution works, according to one of its inventors, Dr. David Pinsky, assistant professor of medicine, because its components preserve the function of the blood vessels and the viability of the cells in the tissue. Unlike current solutions, ingredients in the CPMC solution, dibutyrl cAMP and nitroglycerin, have been targeted specifically to vessel endothelial cells.

The investigators' research has shown that dibutyrl cAMP prevents coagulation in and leakiness of vessel endothelial cells after they are severed from the body. Nitroglycerin allows nitric oxide to improve vessel vasomotor tone. Animal studies reveal that organs are preserved longer in the CPMC solution than in current solutions. In rats, hearts stayed viable for 28 hours before transplantation. In baboons, lungs lasted 22 hours and hearts survived 24 hours.

This solution has application in all organ transplants, but it also could be used during the 200,000 bypass procedures done annually in the United States to improve vascular function of hearts upon recovery. A patent is pending. The CPMC inventors are David Stern, M.D., Mehmet Oz, M.D., David Pinsky, M.D., Roman Nowygrod, M.D., and Shin Koga, M.D.