Running on Ice: Heart transplants get a second life

All thawed out

There has been some new research around organ donors. Researchers have discovered a molecular process that occurs when donor hearts are preserved in cold storage, which contributes to failure after transplant, a study in both humans and animals shows. The team, a collaboration between Michigan Medicine and Mayo Clinic, also found a therapy to reduce that damage using medication that is typically prescribed for high blood pressure.

The current transplant process typically involves a cooler of ice, after the organ has been infused with a cold preservation solution. The longer the heart is stored like this, the higher the chances are that a transplant will have issues and additional complications post-surgery. 

“When a donor heart is stored in the cold, physical changes occur in cardiac cells that cannot be seen by the naked eye,” said senior author Paul Tang, M.D., Ph.D., a heart transplant surgeon who conducted research with collaborators at both the University of Michigan Health Frankel Cardiovascular Center and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

“We observed special protein behaviors during cold preservation at the molecular level that accentuate harmful signaling and cause donor hearts to weaken following transplantation. Disrupting this process can greatly improve a donor heart’s resilience to ischemic injury and its function after transplantation.”

There is a chance that similar processes could be implemented into different organ transplants, but more research is needed to prove that theory.

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