Evaluation of a new preservation solution utilizing a rat lung transplant model

• Grant number: 25/14173-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: October 31, 2025
• End date: October 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine - Surgery
• Principal Investigator: Luiz Felipe Pinho Moreira
• Grantee: Fernanda Yamamoto Ricardo da Silva
• Supervisor: Mingyao Liu
• Host Institution: Instituto do Coração Professor Euryclides de Jesus Zerbini (INCOR). Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da USP (HCFMUSP). Secretaria da Saúde (São Paulo - Estado). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Toronto (U of T), Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 21/13020-6 - INFLUENCE OF BRAIN DEAD DONORS WITH ESTRADIOL TREATMENT ON LUNG PRIMARY GRAFT DYSFUNCTION, BP.PD

Abstract

The low supply of donor lungs bottlenecks patient accessibility to transplantation. This is partially attributed to the short time donor lungs can be preserved using conventional techniques. Thus, a major goal in transplantation medicine is to develop and optimize methods for preserving donor lungs. Our group has recently demonstrated that storing lungs at 10°C confers several advantages to conventional storage at 4°C and may represent the future of clinical donor lung management (1-5). During hypothermic storage, lungs are flushed with a low-potassium dextransolution (LPD) initially developed by our lab more than 30 years ago, specifically for 4°C clinical lung preservation (6). However, as our center moves towards fully adopting 10°C storage, a new preservation solution may be necessary to support the heightened metabolic activity we observe at 10°C compared to 4°C (5). The drug discovery pipeline at the Latner Thoracic Research Laboratories allows us to perform high-throughput screening of preservation solution formulations using a cell culture model of lung transplantation injury. Using this model, we will first identify major injury hallmarks that are attenuated at 10°C versus 4°C and then see if they can be further reduced with a targeted therapeutic approach. Our lung preservation solution formulation(s) that show promise will then advance to rodent and porcine models of lung transplantation, where at each step, we will successively narrow down our formulations to a final solution for clinical testing. Thus, by the conclusion of this study, we aim to test the efficacy of our formulation(s) using in vivo models.