• Marcos Galasso, Jordan J Feld, Yui Watanabe, Mauricio Pipkin, Cara Summers, Aadil Ali, Robert Qaqish, Manyin Chen, Rafaela V P Ribeiro, Khaled Ramadan, Layla Pires, Vanderlei S Bagnato, Cristina Kurachi, Vera Cherepanov, Gray Moonen, Anajara Gazzalle, Thomas K Waddell, Mingyao Liu, Shaf Keshavjee, Brian C Wilson, Atul Humar, and Marcelo Cypel.
• Latner Thoracic Surgery Research Laboratories, Toronto General Research Institute, University Health Network, Toronto, M5G 2C4, ON, Canada.
• Nat Commun. 2019 Jan 29; 10 (1): 481.

AbstractAvailability of organs is a limiting factor for lung transplantation, leading to substantial mortality rates on the wait list. Use of organs from donors with transmissible viral infections, such as hepatitis C virus (HCV), would increase organ donation, but these organs are generally not offered for transplantation due to a high risk of transmission. Here, we develop a method for treatment of HCV-infected human donor lungs that prevents HCV transmission. Physical viral clearance in combination with germicidal light-based therapies during normothermic ex-vivo Lung Perfusion (EVLP), a method for assessment and treatment of injured donor lungs, inactivates HCV virus in a short period of time. Such treatment is shown to be safe using a large animal EVLP-to-lung transplantation model. This strategy of treating viral infection in a donor organ during preservation could significantly increase the availability of organs for transplantation and encourages further clinical development.

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